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

Reply to Kassian et al. (2023). Calibrated weighted permutation test detects ancient language connections in the Circumpolar area (Chukotian-Nivkh and Yukaghir-Samoyedic)

 | Università di Modena e Reggio Emilia
Kassian et al. (2023) propose a method to detect ancient linguistic relationships by means of a weighted permutation test applied to word lists. The method provides evidence for an ancient historical connection between Chukotko-Kamchatkan languages and Nivkh languages, and between Samoyedic languages and Yukaghir. In this paper, I argue that while the word lists collected by the authors represent a valid dataset for language comparison and are supported by extensive etymological work, their statistical tests constitute a departure from the significance testing framework that has propelled contemporary literature on long-range comparison. I then advance some proposals on how their tests can be integrated and compared with those traditionally accepted in the literature.
Keywords: long-range comparison, significance testing of linguistic relationships, classical comparative method, Chukotko-Kamchatkan, Nivkh, Yukaghir, Samoyedic
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Beyond reasonable doubt
  • 3.Word lists
  • 4.Semantic matching criteria
  • 5.Metrics
  • 6.Statistical tests
  • 7.Results
  • 8.Conclusion
  • References
Published online: 29 November 2024
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/jhl.00018.ceo
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