Statistical phylogenetic inference of the Japonic language family

2017 Fiscal Year Final Research Report

• Project/Area Number: 26730122
• Research Category: Grant-in-Aid for Young Scientists (B)
• Allocation Type: Multi-year Fund
• Research Field: Intelligent informatics
• Research Institution: Kyoto University (2015-2017); Kyushu University (2014)
• Principal Investigator: Murawaki Yugo 京都大学, 情報学研究科, 助教 (70616606)
• Project Period (FY): 2014-04-01 – 2018-03-31
• Keywords: ベイズ統計学 / 言語系統論 / 言語類型論 / 基礎語彙

Outline of Final Research Achievements

We developed compute-intensive statistical methods for uncovering phylogenetic relationships between languages. While this problem has long been tackled by linguists through manual labor, we argue that the inherent uncertainty can best be handled by statistical inference. Among key achievements is a Bayesian induction of latent variables from a sequence of features of linguistic typology because it has the potential of tracing holistic structural changes of language involving multiple features.

Free Research Field

計算言語学