Typological Word Order Correlations with Logistic Brownian Motion

Abstract

In this study we address the question to what extent syntactic word-order traits of different languages have evolved under correlation and whether such dependencies can be found universally across all languages or restricted to specific language families.To do so, we use logistic Brownian Motion under a Bayesian framework to model the trait evolution for 768 languages from 34 language families. We test for trait correlations both in single families and universally over all families.Separate models reveal no universal correlation patterns and Bayes Factor analysis of models over all covered families also strongly indicate lineage specific correlation patters instead of universal dependencies.