2014
DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1319042111
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Tracing the roots of syntax with Bayesian phylogenetics

Abstract: The ordering of subject, verb, and object is one of the fundamental components of the syntax of natural languages. The distribution of basic word orders across the world's languages is highly nonuniform, with the majority of languages being either subjectobject-verb (SOV) or subject-verb-object (SVO). Explaining this fact using psychological accounts of language acquisition or processing requires understanding how the present distribution has resulted from ancestral distributions and the rates of change betwee… Show more

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Cited by 34 publications
(39 citation statements)
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“…Surface featurebased estimation had no other way to explain the presence of these uncommon word orders than slowing down the convergence to the stationary distribution (otherwise they go extinct). Maurits and Griffiths (2014) also reported some counterintuitive results regarding OVS and OSV. By contrast, latent parameter-based estimation appears to have explained the low frequencies partly with the stochasticity of observation associated with the latent-to-surface mapping.…”
Section: Variability Of Diachronic Stabilitymentioning
confidence: 99%
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“…Surface featurebased estimation had no other way to explain the presence of these uncommon word orders than slowing down the convergence to the stationary distribution (otherwise they go extinct). Maurits and Griffiths (2014) also reported some counterintuitive results regarding OVS and OSV. By contrast, latent parameter-based estimation appears to have explained the low frequencies partly with the stochasticity of observation associated with the latent-to-surface mapping.…”
Section: Variability Of Diachronic Stabilitymentioning
confidence: 99%
“…We collected 50 calibration points from secondary literature (Holman et al, 2011;Bouckaert et al, 2012;Gray et al, 2009;Maurits and Griffiths, 2014;Grollemund et al, 2015). For example, we set a Gaussian prior with mean 2,500 BP (before present) and standard deviation 500 on the date of (Proto-)Hmong-Mien.…”
Section: Data and Preprocessingmentioning
confidence: 99%
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“…We will conclude with a discussion of open research questions for the analysis of language change and diachronic textual corpora (Nerbonne, 2010;Eisenstein, 2013;Maurits and Griffiths, 2014;Perek, 2014).…”
Section: What's Next?mentioning
confidence: 99%