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Computational phylogenetics and the classification of South American languages
Author(s) -
Michael Lev,
ChousouPolydouri Natalia
Publication year - 2019
Publication title -
language and linguistics compass
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.619
H-Index - 44
ISSN - 1749-818X
DOI - 10.1111/lnc3.12358
Subject(s) - character (mathematics) , linguistics , phylogenetic tree , computer science , artificial intelligence , natural language processing , biology , mathematics , philosophy , biochemistry , geometry , gene
In recent years, South Americanist linguists have embraced computational phylogenetic methods to resolve the numerous outstanding questions about the genealogical relationships among the languages of the continent. We provide a critical review of the methods and language classification results that have accumulated thus far, emphasizing the superiority of character‐based methods over distance‐based ones and the importance of developing adequate comparative datasets for producing well‐resolved classifications.