测试多语言词表中概念翻译的稳定性，发现一致性不足83%。
Unstable Grounds for Beautiful Trees? Testing the Robustness of Concept Translations in the Compilation of Multilingual Wordlists
- 对比10组独立编纂的词表，检验概念翻译一致性。
- 平均仅83%的翻译保持相同词形，23%有相同音标形式。
- 提醒研究者注意系统演化分析中的数据不确定性。
多语言词表在比较语言学中至关重要。尽管已有大量研究测试计算方法在语言分支划分或分化时间估计中的有效性，但很少有研究对这些研究所依赖的数据进行严格检验。本文首次开展实验，测试多语言词表编纂中概念翻译的鲁棒性。我们分析了10组独立编纂的词表（覆盖9个不同语系），发现平均仅有83%的翻译保持相同的词形，而音标形式完全一致的情况仅占23%。这一结果对评估系统发生研究及其结论的不确定性具有重要意义。
原文摘要 · Abstract (English)
Multilingual wordlists play a crucial role in comparative linguistics. While many studies have been carried out to test the power of computational methods for language subgrouping or divergence time estimation, few studies have put the data upon which these studies are based to a rigorous test. Here, we conduct a first experiment that tests the robustness of concept translation as an integral part of the compilation of multilingual wordlists. Investigating the variation in concept translations in independently compiled wordlists from 10 dataset pairs covering 9 different language families, we find that on average, only 83% of all translations yield the same word form, while identical forms in terms of phonetic transcriptions can only be found in 23% of all cases. Our findings can prove important when trying to assess the uncertainty of phylogenetic studies and the conclusions derived from them.
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