tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8386055846297828307.post14465210119698777..comments2024-03-28T07:34:49.133+01:00Comments on The Genealogical World of Phylogenetic Networks: Language history and language weirdnessUnknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger7125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8386055846297828307.post-85161624103920737662018-01-02T18:47:59.128+01:002018-01-02T18:47:59.128+01:00Thank you for the prompt and informative reply! Thank you for the prompt and informative reply! Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11459232137801550728noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8386055846297828307.post-1855890980655781012018-01-02T13:17:06.337+01:002018-01-02T13:17:06.337+01:00The "sum of all differences between the indiv...The "sum of all differences between the individual features" is called the Manhattan Distance. There are many, many such distances defined in the literature, and the Manhattan is as good as any of them. I often use it in this blog.<br /><br />However, the "problem of missing values" is a big one for most distances. The only practical solution appears to be to define a modified distance, which is what the Gower similarity does (the one I used in this post). The distance is recalculated as a percentage of the maximum possible distance for any pair of languages (the maximum being the sum of the non-missing features rather than the sum of all features).<br /><br />Idibon was a start-up company, and it (sadly) closed down when they could not get any further venture funding.<br /><br />The data coding for each feature is explained at the original data source, the World Atlas of Language Structures.<br />David Morrisonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05469392205239443608noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8386055846297828307.post-85187342403902508912018-01-02T02:31:07.075+01:002018-01-02T02:31:07.075+01:00Thank you for making this dataset public and for a...Thank you for making this dataset public and for all the useful amendments. <br />I am trying to put together a study that looks at the rate of long-term English acquisition and its relationship with a "distance from English" variable, which I hope to define as the sum (or the average) of differences of individual, feature-specific indices for each language from those of English. Namely, the distance from English to Armenian is equal to the Sum (or average) of all differences between the individual features. Ignoring the problem of missing values for the time being, do you think this a reasonable way to measure such a distance? Do you know how the particular values are calculated, and what do they represent? I know Idibon is the original creator of the dataset, but they seem to have vanished into thin air.<br />Thank you,<br /><br />Narek SahakyanAnonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11459232137801550728noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8386055846297828307.post-35434370027985856022014-10-28T18:05:25.928+01:002014-10-28T18:05:25.928+01:00I do not feel confident enough of my linguistic as...I do not feel confident enough of my linguistic assessments to do that. /DavidDavid Morrisonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05469392205239443608noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8386055846297828307.post-23336140722198834342014-10-28T15:16:28.668+01:002014-10-28T15:16:28.668+01:00Did you feed you additions and corrections back in...Did you feed you additions and corrections back into WALS, so that future researchers trying to work with the data there benefit from it?Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8386055846297828307.post-8584615256978074872013-11-18T08:42:11.982+01:002013-11-18T08:42:11.982+01:00Thanks for your interest. That paper reaches somew...Thanks for your interest. That paper reaches somewhat different conclusions about languages. /DavidDavid Morrisonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05469392205239443608noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8386055846297828307.post-85925562733182212652013-11-18T07:10:05.813+01:002013-11-18T07:10:05.813+01:00Very similar to this paper by Greenhill et al: The...Very similar to this paper by Greenhill et al: <a href="http://rspb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/early/2010/04/01/rspb.2010.0051.abstract" rel="nofollow">The shape and tempo of language evolution</a>Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com