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Abstract
Kassian et al. (2023) propose a method to detect ancient linguistic relationships by means of a weighted permutation test applied to word lists. The method provides evidence for an ancient historical connection between Chukotko-Kamchatkan languages and Nivkh languages, and between Samoyedic languages and Yukaghir. In this paper, I argue that while the word lists collected by the authors represent a valid dataset for language comparison and are supported by extensive etymological work, their statistical tests constitute a departure from the significance testing framework that has propelled contemporary literature on long-range comparison. I then advance some proposals on how their tests can be integrated and compared with those traditionally accepted in the literature.
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