# A probabilistic assessment of the Indo-Aryan Inner-Outer Hypothesis

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/1912.01957 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/1912.01957/

## Key facts

- Cited by 4 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- First posted on arXiv 29 Nov 2019.

## Built on by (most cited first, 4 of 4)

- [Computational historical linguistics and language diversity in South Asia](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2203.12524/) (2022)
- [Bhasacitra: Visualising the dialect geography of South Asia](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2105.14082/) (2021)
- [Jambu: A historical linguistic database for South Asian languages](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2306.02514/) (2023)
- [For the Purpose of Curry: A UD Treebank for Ashokan Prakrit](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2111.12783/) (2021)

## Abstract (arXiv)

This paper uses a novel data-driven probabilistic approach to address the century-old Inner-Outer hypothesis of Indo-Aryan. I develop a Bayesian hierarchical mixed-membership model to assess the validity of this hypothesis using a large data set of automatically extracted sound changes operating between Old Indo-Aryan and Modern Indo-Aryan speech varieties. I employ different prior distributions in order to model sound change, one of which, the logistic normal distribution, has not received much attention in linguistics outside of Natural Language Processing, despite its many attractive features. I find evidence for cohesive dialect groups that have made their imprint on contemporary Indo-Aryan languages, and find that when a logistic normal prior is used, the distribution of dialect components across languages is largely compatible with a core-periphery pattern similar to that proposed under the Inner-Outer hypothesis.