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Language Classification by Numbers

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ISBN-10: 0199279020

ISBN-13: 9780199279029

Edition: 2005

Authors: April McMahon, Robert McMahon

List price: $62.00
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This book considers how languages have traditionally been divided into families, and asks how they should classified in the future. It describes and applies computer programs from biology and evolutionary genetics to data about languages and shows how the power of the computer can be harnessed to throw light on long-standing problems in historical linguistics. It tests current theories and hypotheses, shows how new ideas can be formulated, and offers a series of demonstrations that the new techniques applied to old data can produce convincing results that are sometimes startlingly at odds with accepted wisdom. April and Robert McMahon combine the expertise and perspectives of an historical…    
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Book details

List price: $62.00
Copyright year: 2005
Publisher: Oxford University Press, Incorporated
Publication date: 2/2/2006
Binding: Paperback
Pages: 288
Size: 6.50" wide x 9.50" long x 0.75" tall
Weight: 1.100
Language: English

Bas Aarts is Professor of English Linguistics and Director of the Survey of English Usage at University College London. His publications include Small Clauses in English: The Nonverbal Types (1992), The Verb in Contemporary English (edited with Charles F. Meyer, 1995), English Syntax and Argumentation (1997/2001), Investigating Natural Language: Working with the British Component of the International Corpus of English (with Gerald Nelson and Sean Wallis, 2002), and Fuzzy Grammar: A Reader (edited with David Denison, Evelien Keizer, and Gergana Popova, 2004). With David Denison and Richard Hogg, he edits the journal English Language and Linguistics.April McMahon is Forbes Professor of…    

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