Lexical phylogenetics of the Tupí-Guaraní family: Language, archaeology, and the problem of chronology.

Tupí-Guaraní is one of the largest branches of the Tupían language family, but despite its relevance there is no consensus about its origins in terms of age, homeland, and expansion. Linguistic classifications vary significantly, with archaeological studies suggesting incompatible date ranges while ethnographic literature confirms the close similarities as a result of continuous inter-family contact. To investigate this issue, we use a linguistic database of cognate data, employing Bayesian phylogenetic methods to infer a dated tree and to build a phylogeographic expansion model.

Using lexical language models to detect borrowings in monolingual wordlists.

Lexical borrowing, the transfer of words from one language to another, is one of the most frequent processes in language evolution. In order to detect borrowings, linguists make use of various strategies, combining evidence from various sources. Despite the increasing popularity of computational approaches in comparative linguistics, automated approaches to lexical borrowing detection are still in their infancy, disregarding many aspects of the evidence that is routinely considered by human experts.

The Database of Cross-Linguistic Colexifications, reproducible analysis of cross-linguistic polysemies.

Advances in computer-assisted linguistic research have been greatly influential in reshaping linguistic research. With the increasing availability of interconnected datasets created and curated by researchers, more and more interwoven questions can now be investigated. Such advances, however, are bringing high requirements in terms of rigorousness for preparing and curating datasets.