Phylogenetic Models for Semitic Vocabulary

Geoff K. Nicholls (1) , Robin Ryder (2)

1 Department of Statistics [Oxford]
2 CREST - Centre de Recherche en Économie et Statistique

Kitchen et al. (2009) analyze a data set of lexical trait data for twenty five Semitic languages, including ancient languages Hebrew, Aramaic and Akka- dian, modern South Arabian and Arabic languages and fifteen ethiosemitic lan- guages. They estimate a phylogenetic tree for the diversification of lexical traits using tree and trait models and methods set up for genetic sequence data. We reanalyze the data in a homplasy-free model for lexical trait data. We use a prior on phylogenies which is non-informative with respect to some of the key scien- tific hypotheses (concerning topology and root time). Our results are in broad agreement with those of Kitchen et al. (2009), though our 95% HPD for the root of the Semitic tree (the branching of Akkadian) is [4400, 5100]BP and we place Moroccan and Ogaden Arabic in the Modern South Arabian Group.

Mots clés: Bayesian phylogenetics; cultural traits; languages

Domaines: Théorie [stat.TH]; Statistiques [math.ST]

Geoff K. Nicholls, Robin Ryder. Phylogenetic Models for Semitic Vocabulary. 2011. ⟨hal-00641450⟩