Mapping Language Families – an Ontological Approach
In this chapter, we’ll explore an important area of science called linguistics. Linguistics is the study of languages, including word usage patterns, grammar evolution, and the social constructs of language. We’ll explore ontologies, which relate concepts such as words to each other through defined relationships, and build language families, where languages within a family are related to each other across time and geography.
Network science provides us with tools to summarize and compare ontologies and language families to study hypothesized similarities and differences. We’ll quantify differences in hypothesized language families at the end of this chapter, though the methodology can apply to ontologies or any other network-based structures derived from linguistic studies.
In this chapter, we will cover the following topics:
- What is an ontology?
- Language families
- Mapping language...
