Manual of comparative linguistics
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Hence, we can estimate total number of affixes of a living language as far as we can get its description where all stable forms are represented. And there is no need to care of what can be in a certain language in future, i.e.: we consider current stage of living language and don’t care of possible future stages since they simply don’t exist yet.
As for possibility of count, I am to tell that even set of words is countable set while set of morphemes and especially auxiliary morphemes is not just countable set but also is finite set.
2.1.4. PAI method testing: from a hypothesis toward a theory
In order to test PAI hypothesis I paid attention to some languages of firmly assembled stocks: Austronesian, Indo-European and Afroasiatic.
2.1.4.1. PAI of languages of Austronesian stock
Polynesian group
Eastern Polynesian Subgroup
Hawaiian 0.82 (calculated after Krupa 1979)
Maori 0.88 (calculated fater Krupa 1967)
Tahitian 0.66 (calculated after Arakin 1981)
Samoan-Tokelauan subgroup
Samoan 0.5 (calculated after Arakin 1973)
Tongic subgroup
Niuean 0.8 (calculated after Polinskaya 1995)
Tongan 0.78 (calculated after Fell 1918)
Philippine group
South Mindanao subgroup
T’boli 0.72 (calculated after Porter 1977)
Northern Luzon subgroup
Pangasinan 0.6 (calculated after Rayner 1923)
Malayo-Sumbawan group
Malay subgroup
Indonesian 0.53 (calculated after Ogloblin 2008)
Pic. 2. Map representing location of Austronesian languages mentioned in current chapter: languages are marked by red, place names are maked by black.
Chamic subgroup
Cham 0.6 (calculated after Aymonier 1889; Alieva, B`ui 1999)
Formosan group
Bunun 0.8 (calculated after De Busser 2009)
Eastern Barito group
Malagasy 0.74 (calculated after Arakin 1963)
2.1.4.2. PAI of languages Indo-European stock
German group
Dutch 0.49 (calculated after Donaldson 1997)
German 0.51 (calculated after Donaldson 2007)
English 0.61 (calculated after Barhkhudarov et al. 2000)
Icelandic 0.63 (calculated after Einarsson 1949)
Slavonic group
Czech 0.52 (calculated after Harkins 1952)
Polish 0.57 (calculated after Swan 2002)
Celtic group
Irish 0.67 (McGonage 2005)
Welsh 0.35 (calculated after King 2015)
Roman group
Latin 0.26 (calculated after Bennet 1913)
Spanish 0.34 (calculated after Katt'an-Ibarra, Pountain 2003)
2.1.4.3. PAI of languages of Afroasiatic stock
Semitic group
Central Semitic subgroup
Arabic (Classical) 0.26 (calculated after Yushmanov 2008)
Phoenician 0.26 (calculated after Shiftman 2010)
Eastern Semitic subgroup
Akkadian (Old Babylonian dialect) 0.2 (calculated after Kaplan 2006)
Egypt group
Coptic (Sahidic dialect) 0.87 (calculated after Elanskaya 2010)
Pic. 3. Diagram representing PAI values of some firmly assembled stocks
2.1.5. PAI of a group/stock
PAI of a group or a stock can be calculated as arithmetical mean and it’s quite precise for rough estimation.
One can probably say that just arithmetic mean is quite rough estimation and in order to estimate PAI in a more precise way it would be better to take values of PAI of particular languages with coefficients that show proximity of particular languages to the ancestor language of the stock. Coefficient of proximity is degree of correlation of grammar systems.
Let’s test this hypothesis and see whether it so.
For instance, in the case of Austronesian it would be somehow like the following:
Malagasy^PAN 9 0.5;
Bunun^PAN 0.8;
Philippine group^PAN 0.7;
Indonesian^PAN 0.6;
Cham^PAN 0.4;
Polynesian languages^PAN 0.5.
Indexes show degree of proximity of languages (grammatical systems). In current case these indexes are not results of any calculations but just approximate speculative estimation of degrees of proximity of modern Austronesian languages with Proto-Austronesian; it is supposed that Formosan languages and so called languages of Philippines type are the closest relatives of PAN among modern Austronesian.
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PAN means Proto-Austronesian; “^” is sign of grammar/structure correlation
If we take each particular PAI value with corresponding coefficient of proximity we get that PAI of Austronesian is about 0.44.
If we take just arithmetical mean without proximity coefficients we get 0.6.
0.6 is obviously closer to real values of PAI of Austronesian languages than 0.44. Hence thereby it’s possible to state that just arithmetical mean is completely sufficient way to calculate PAI of a group/stock while PAI calculated with use of proximity coefficients gives results that differ seriously from reality.