Talk:Lexicostatistics

Start
This page used to redirect to glottochronology. I don't have the time to do much more with the article right now, but would encourage others to do so! What I've written (hastily) is not terribly elegant, no good for non-linguists and focuses too much on lexicostatistics not being the same as glottochronology. But hey, it's a start! garik 17:58, 7 December 2006 (UTC) Modified by garik 18:21, 7 December 2006 (UTC)

Create a word list
In this section it says "the aim is to generate a list of universal culture-free meanings." The term culture-free seems excessive and confusing. Hand, mouth, sky, I--are realities found in all cultures. Shared by all cultures would be more appropriate. The article on glottochronology says "This core vocabulary was designed to encompass concepts common to every human language (such as personal pronouns, body parts, heavenly bodies, verbs of basic actions, numerals 'one' and 'two', etc.), eliminating concepts that are specific to a particular culture or time. --Hijasegunda (talk) 21:23, 7 December 2009 (UTC)--205.167.120.201 (talk) 21:12, 7 December 2009 (UTC)


 * There is a huge problem with the methodology. This has to be one of very few instances in "science" (the quotation marks are used advisdly - they only refer to lexicostatistics, not historical linguistics as a whole) where one gets more "accurate" results by reducing the data. Lexicostatistics is mostly discarded by historical linguists. Anyway, this might be a good place to point out the difference between "accuracy" and "precision". One can select words for the lists, fewer and fewer words to get almost any precision one desires, but the results will not be accurate. 85.220.22.139 (talk) — Preceding undated comment added 21:48, 4 June 2014 (UTC)

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