Geography and language divergence: The case of Andic languages

Le résumé fourni par la source

We study the correlation between phylogenetic and geographic distances for the languages of the Andic branch of the East Caucasian (Nakh-Daghestanian) language family. For several alternative phylogenies, we find that geographic distances correlate with linguistic divergence. Notably, qualitative classifications show a better fit with geography than cognacy-based phylogenies. We interpret this result as follows: The better fit may be due to implicit geographic bias in qualitative classifications. We conclude that approaches to classification other than those based on cognacy run a risk to implicitly include geography and geography-related factors as one basis of genealogical classifications.

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