A perennial conflict in historical linguistics centers around the theoretical and practical virtues of tree-like divergence and wave-like diffusion. This paper presents the Dialect Chain Tree, an extension of the tree model that incorporates both tree-like descent and disintegration of dialect… read more
One attempt at explaining why some language families are large (while others are small) is the hypothesis that the families that are now large became large because their ancestral speakers had a technological advantage, most often agriculture. Variants of this idea are referred to as the Language… read more
One attempt at explaining why some language families are large (while others are small) is the hypothesis that the families that are now large became large because their ancestral speakers had a technological advantage, most often agriculture. Variants of this idea are referred to as the Language… read more
This paper defines and surveys numeral systems from languages across the world. We define the complexity of a numeral system in some detail and give examples of varying complexity from different languages. The examples are chosen to illustrate the bounds on complexity that actually occur in natural… read more