Fig. 4: Multi-dimensional scaling (MDS) visualisation of mean optimal string alignment (OSA) distances. | Humanities and Social Sciences Communications

Fig. 4: Multi-dimensional scaling (MDS) visualisation of mean optimal string alignment (OSA) distances.

From: Systematic correspondence in co-evolving languages

Fig. 4

a, b MDS plot for OSA distances between syllables across the dialectal varieties spoken in Shanghai, with Standard Chinese (SC) included (a) and excluded (b). An arrow is drawn from each sub-dialect’s old version to its new version, and labels and points are colour-coded according to dialectal varieties. c MDS plot for OSA distances between lexical forms across old (oldE and oldG), modern (modE and modG), and recent (recE and recG) English and German varieties. An arrow is drawn from each language’s old variety to modern vary and from modern variety to recent variety.

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