English

Number Theory Meets Linguistics: Modelling Noun Pluralisation Across 1497 Languages Using 2-adic Metrics

Computation and Language 2022-11-24 v1 Number Theory

Abstract

A simple machine learning model of pluralisation as a linear regression problem minimising a p-adic metric substantially outperforms even the most robust of Euclidean-space regressors on languages in the Indo-European, Austronesian, Trans New-Guinea, Sino-Tibetan, Nilo-Saharan, Oto-Meanguean and Atlantic-Congo language families. There is insufficient evidence to support modelling distinct noun declensions as a p-adic neighbourhood even in Indo-European languages.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2211.13124,
  title  = {Number Theory Meets Linguistics: Modelling Noun Pluralisation Across 1497 Languages Using 2-adic Metrics},
  author = {Gregory Baker and Diego Molla-Aliod},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2211.13124},
  year   = {2022}
}

Comments

Accepted into AACL-IJCNLP 2022