Linguistic Phylogenetic Inference by PAM-like Matrices
Nello Cristianini and antonella delmestri
Technical Report 2010.

Abstract

We apply to the task of linguistic phylogenetic inference a successful cognate identification learning model based on PAM-like matrices. We train our system and we employ the learned parameters for measuring the lexical distance between languages. We estimate phylogenetic trees using distancebased methods on an Indo-European database. Our results reproduce correctly all the established major language groups present in the dataset, are compatible with the Indo-European benchmark tree and include also some of the supported higher-level structures. We review and compare other studies reported in the literature with respect to recognised aspects of Indo-European history. Keywords: phylogenetic inference, distance-based methods, PAM-like matrices.

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