6 papers
Complexity counts: global and local perspectives on Indo-Aryan numeral systems
Chundra Cathcart
The numeral systems of Indo-Aryan languages such as Hindi, Gujarati, and Bengali are highly unusual in that unlike most numeral systems (e.g., those of English, Chinese, etc.), for…
Semantics drives analogical change in Germanic strong verb paradigms: a phylogenetic study
Alexandru Craevschi, Sarah Babinski, Chundra Cathcart
A large body of research on morphological paradigms makes the prediction that irregular morphological patterns of allomorphy are more likely to emerge and persist when they serve t…
Multiple evolutionary pressures shape identical consonant avoidance in the world's languages
Chundra A. Cathcart
Languages disfavor word forms containing sequences of similar or identical consonants, due to the biomechanical and cognitive difficulties posed by patterns of this sort. However,…
In search of isoglosses: continuous and discrete language embeddings in Slavic historical phonology
Chundra A. Cathcart, Florian Wandl
This paper investigates the ability of neural network architectures to effectively learn diachronic phonological generalizations in a multilingual setting. We employ models using t…
Dialectal Layers in West Iranian: a Hierarchical Dirichlet Process Approach to Linguistic Relationships
Chundra Aroor Cathcart
This paper addresses a series of complex and unresolved issues in the historical phonology of West Iranian languages. The West Iranian languages (Persian, Kurdish, Balochi, and oth…
A probabilistic assessment of the Indo-Aryan Inner-Outer Hypothesis
Chundra A. Cathcart
This paper uses a novel data-driven probabilistic approach to address the century-old Inner-Outer hypothesis of Indo-Aryan. I develop a Bayesian hierarchical mixed-membership model…