# Phylogenetic signal in phonotactics

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2002.00527 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2002.00527/

## Key facts

- Cited by 3 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- First posted on arXiv 3 Feb 2020.

## Built on by (most cited first, 3 of 3)

- [Multiple evolutionary pressures shape identical consonant avoidance in the world's languages](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2309.14006/) (2023)
- [Evolution and trade-off dynamics of functional load](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2112.12224/) (2021)
- [Challenges of sampling and how phylogenetic comparative methods help: With a case study of the Pama-Nyungan laminal contrast](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2201.00195/) (2022)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Phylogenetic methods have broad potential in linguistics beyond tree inference. Here, we show how a phylogenetic approach opens the possibility of gaining historical insights from entirely new kinds of linguistic data--in this instance, statistical phonotactics. We extract phonotactic data from 111 Pama-Nyungan vocabularies and apply tests for phylogenetic signal, quantifying the degree to which the data reflect phylogenetic history. We test three datasets: (1) binary variables recording the presence or absence of biphones (two-segment sequences) in a lexicon (2) frequencies of transitions between segments, and (3) frequencies of transitions between natural sound classes. Australian languages have been characterized as having a high degree of phonotactic homogeneity. Nevertheless, we detect phylogenetic signal in all datasets. Phylogenetic signal is greater in finer-grained frequency data than in binary data, and greatest in natural-class-based data. These results demonstrate the viability of employing a new source of readily extractable data in historical and comparative linguistics.