| Description |
This data set contains, for most African, Eurasian, and American language families, the number of languages in the family, and also the lexical diversity among those languages as measured by cognate percentages in lexicostatistical wordlists. The data are the same as in the Appendix of Holman (2004), but the present notes are more numerous and detailed. A language family is included in the compilation if and only if it satisfies the following three conditions. First, it is generally accepted as a genetic unit, that is, descended from a single ancestral language. Second, appropriate cognate percentages are published or can be calculated from published data. This condition excludes isolates, which do not share recognized cognates with other languages. Third, the family is not a subset of another family that satisfies the first two conditions. The three conditions together imply that the families included are the largest and oldest generally accepted families with available cognate percentages.
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ICAR Research Data Repository for Knowledge Management