This book is an innovative guide to quantitative, corpus-based research in historical and diachronic linguistics. Gard B. Jenset and Barbara McGillivray argue that, although historical linguistics has been successful in using the comparative method, the field lags behind other branches of linguistics with respect to adopting quantitative methods. Here they provide a theoretically agnostic description of a new framework for quantitatively assessing models and hypotheses in historical linguistics, based on corpus data and using case studies to illustrate how this framework can answer research questions in historical linguistics. The authors offer an in-depth explanation and discussion of the benefits of working with quantitative methods, corpus data, and corpus annotation, and the advantages of open and reproducible research. The book will be a valuable resource for graduate students and researchers in historical linguistics, as well as for all those working with linguistic corpora.

Quantitative Methods in Linguistics offers a practical introduction to statistics and quantitative analysis with data sets drawn from the field and coverage of phonetics, psycholinguistics, sociolinguistics, historical linguistics, and syntax, as well as probability distribution and quantitative methods. Provides balanced treatment of the practical aspects of handling quantitative linguistic data Includes sample datasets contributed by researchers working in a variety of sub-disciplines of linguistics Uses R, the statistical software package most commonly used by linguists, to discover patterns in quantitative data and to test linguistic hypotheses Includes student-friendly end-of-chapter assignments and is accompanied by online resources at available in the 'Downloads' section, below

Since the 1960s quantitative linguistics has undergone a great development marked especially by attempts to work systematically with language phenomena on all language levels. Besides traditional areas where significant results were already achieved before the 60s (phonology, graphemics and lexicology), quantitative linguistics has now also penetrated into morphology, syntax, stylistics, history and typology of languages and, more recently, into semantics. This book gives a comprehensive account of the various developments and applications in quantitative linguistics.After an overview of methods used in quantitative linguistics, it discusses the main areas: lexical statistics, grammatical statistics and semantics statistics, with reference to a great number of studies of different languages and language families. Chapter 4 deals with other domains (phonology, graphemics, stylistics, typology, development of languages, word-formation), Chapter 6 deals with various applications, and Chapter 7 discusses the relationship between quantitative linguistics and the computer. The volume is completed by an extensive list of references and indices of names and of subjects.

Over the past two decades, statistical and other quantitative concepts, models and methods have been increasingly gaining importance and interest in all areas of linguistics and text analysis, as well as in a number of neighboring disciplines and areas of application. The term "quantitative linguistics" comprises all scientific and technical approaches which use such terms and methods in the analysis of or work with language(s), texts and other related subjects. The 71 articles in this handbook, written by internationally-recognized experts, offer a broad, up-to-date overview of the scientific-theoretical principles, the history, the diversity of the subject areas studied, the methods and models used, the results obtained thus far and their applications. The articles are divided up into thirteen chapters: the first chapter includes contributions on the basic principles and the history of the field, nine additional chapters are dedicated to individual descriptions of the levels of linguistic research (from phonology to pragmatics) as well as typological, diachronic and geolinguistic questions. The next two chapters include a description of important models, hypotheses and principles; selected areas of application; and references to neighboring disciplines. The last portion of the handbook is an informative contribution, with information about publication forums, bibliographies, major projects, Internet links, etc. This handbook is useful not only for researchers, teachers and students of all branches of linguistics and the philologies, but also for scientists in neighboring fields, whose theoretical and empirical research touches on linguistic questions (for instance, psychology and sociology), or for those who want to make use of the proven methods or results from quantitative linguistics in their own research.

Quantitative linguistic research reveals fascinating patterns in contemporary and historical linguistic data. The book offers insights from a broad range of languages, including Japanese, Slovene and Catalan. The reader is convinced that statistic empirical analysis – and increasingly also machine learning and big data – should be an essential part of any serious linguistic enquiry.

Quantitative methods in linguistics, which the protean American structuralist linguist Morris Swadesh introduced in the 1950s, have become increasingly popular and have opened the world of languages to interdisciplinary approaches. The papers collected here are the work not only of descriptive and historical linguists, but also statisticians, physicists and computer scientists. They demonstrate the application of quantitative methods to the elucidation of linguistic prehistory on an unprecedented world-wide scale, providing cutting-edge insights into issues of the linguistic correlates of subsistence strategies, rates of birth and extinction of languages, lexical borrowability, the identification of language family homelands, the assessment of genealogical relationships, and the development of new phylogenetic methods appropriate for linguistic data. Originally published in Diachronica 27:2 (2010).