Received: from ELI.CS.YALE.EDU by NEBULA.SYSTEMSZ.CS.YALE.EDU via SMTP; Tue, 2 Nov 1993 14:13:49 -0500 Received: from YALEVM.YCC.YALE.EDU by eli.CS.YALE.EDU via SMTP; Tue, 2 Nov 1993 14:13:30 -0500 Message-Id: <199311021913.AA03118@eli.CS.YALE.EDU> Received: from CUVMB.CC.COLUMBIA.EDU by YaleVM.YCC.Yale.Edu (IBM VM SMTP V2R2) with BSMTP id 4965; Tue, 02 Nov 93 14:13:23 EST Received: from CUVMB.COLUMBIA.EDU by CUVMB.CC.COLUMBIA.EDU (Mailer R2.07) with BSMTP id 2331; Tue, 02 Nov 93 14:12:58 EDT Date: Tue, 2 Nov 1993 14:11:31 -0500 Reply-To: Logical Language Group Sender: Lojban list From: Logical Language Group Subject: TECH.LING: Lojban glottochronology X-To: lojban@cuvmb.cc.columbia.edu To: Erik Rauch Status: RO X-Status: X-From-Space-Date: Tue Nov 2 09:11:31 1993 X-From-Space-Address: @YaleVM.YCC.YALE.EDU:LOJBAN@CUVMB.BITNET I have run Jacques Guy's package GLOTTO on the Lojban etymology files which were used to construct the Lojban gismu. These files contain the current gismu and Lojbanized words from Chinese, English, Hindi, Spanish, Russian, and Arabic which were used to form the gismu. GLOTTO requires that the words be classified by whether the user thinks they are cognate or not. I used the assumption that a word is cognate to Lojban if its score was 2 or more, and not cognate to Lojban (or any of the other languages) if its score was 0. (Scores of 1 are not possible.) The following table indicates the percentages of cognate words between each of the pairs of languages: % (cognates per hundred) Lojban 2 Chinese 99 3 English 93 92 4 Hindi 85 84 79 5 Spanish 74 73 70 63 6 Russian 65 64 61 55 49 7 Arabic 47 46 44 41 35 32 From this data, another GLOTTO program was able to produce a family tree. Note, however, that the family tree is NOT a rooted one: it shows relative relationships only, and the root of the tree is not to be identified with a hypothetical proto-language of the seven. The relationships are mostly quite correct. Tree reconstructed from cognate percentages in LOJBAN.PC Lojban -1002----:-996-----:-996-----: Chinese -988-----' | | Hindi -----852-----------' | English -----937-----------:-994-----| Spanish -----747-----------' | Russian -----665-----------:-984-----' Arabic -----481-----------' (Figures on branches are words retained per 1000) -- John Cowan sharing account for now e'osai ko sarji la lojban.