Feb. 11, 2013 University of British Columbia and Berkeley
researchers have used a sophisticated new computer system to
quickly reconstruct protolanguages -- the rudimentary ancient
tongues from which modern languages evolved. The results, which
are 85 per cent accurate when compared to the painstaking manual
reconstructions performed by linguists, will be published next
week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
"We're hopeful our tool will revolutionize historical
linguistics much the same way that statistical analysis and
computer power revolutionized the study of evolutionary
biology," says UBC Assistant Prof. of Statistics Alexandre
Bouchard-Côté, lead author of the study. "And while our system
won't replace the nuanced work of skilled linguists, it could
prove valuable by enabling them to increase the number of modern
languages they use as the basis for their reconstructions."
Protolanguages are reconstructed by grouping words with common
meanings from related modern languages, analyzin