Article published In:
Journal of Historical Linguistics: Online-First Articles

Calibrated weighted permutation test detects ancient language connections in the Circumpolar area (Chukotian-Nivkh and Yukaghir-Samoyedic) [*] *

| The Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration | Institute for Slavic Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences
| National Research University Higher School of Economics | Santa Fe Institute
| National Research University Higher School of Economics | Russian State University for the Humanities
| Lomonosov Moscow State University | National Research University Higher School of Economics | Federal State Institution “Scientific Research Institute for System Analysis of the Russian Academy of Sciences”

Relationships between universally recognized language families represent a hotly debated topic in historical linguistics, and the same is true for correlation between signals of genetic and linguistic relatedness. We developed a weighted permutation test which represents the classical permutation tests with weights introduced for individual Swadesh concepts according to their typological stability. Further, the obtained values were calibrated on a negative control group to override non-uniform distribution of phonemes within the Swadesh wordlist. We applied the calibrated permutation test to the basic vocabularies of nine languages and reconstructed proto-languages to show that three groups of circumpolar language families in the Northern Hemisphere show evidence of relationship through common descent or borrowing in the basic vocabulary: [Chukotko-Kamchatkan, Nivkh]; [Yukaghir, Samoyedic]; and [Yeniseian, Na-Dene, Burushaski]. The former two pairs showed the most significant signals of language relationship. Our findings further support some hypotheses on long-distance language relationships previously put forward based on linguistic methods but lacking universal acceptance.

Keywords: Circumpolar languages, permutation test, Chukotian-Itelmen, Nivkh, Samoyedic-Yukaghir, Dene-Yeniseian, Burushaski
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Materials and methods
  • 3.Results
  • 4.Discussion
  • Online supplement
  • Acknowledgements
  • References
Published online: 18 December 2023
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/jhl.00014.kas
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