Santos Maelyson Rolim Fonseca Dos, Gomes Marcelo Andrade de Filgueiras
Instituto Federal de Educação, Ciência e Tecnologia de Pernambuco, Barreiros 55560-000, PE, Brazil.
Departamento de Física, Universidade Federal de Pernambuco, Recife 50670-901, PE, Brazil.
Entropy (Basel). 2025 May 31;27(6):588. doi: 10.3390/e27060588.
This article investigates scaling laws within language families using data from over six thousand languages and analyzes emergent patterns observed in Zipf-like classification graphs. Both macroscopic (based on the number of languages by family) and microscopic (based on the number of speakers by language within a family) aspects of these classifications are examined. Particularly noteworthy is the discovery of a distinct division among the fourteen largest contemporary language families, excluding Afro-Asiatic and Nilo-Saharan languages. These families are found to be distributed across three language family quadruplets, each characterized by significantly different exponents in the Zipf graphs. This finding sheds light on the underlying structure and organization of major language families, revealing intriguing insights into the nature of linguistic diversity and distribution.
本文利用六千多种语言的数据研究语系内部的缩放定律，并分析在齐普夫式分类图中观察到的新兴模式。研究考察了这些分类的宏观（基于语系的语言数量）和微观（基于语系内每种语言的使用者数量）两个方面。特别值得注意的是，在当代十四大语系中发现了一个明显的划分，不包括亚非语系和尼罗-撒哈拉语系。这些语系分布在三个语系四元组中，每个四元组在齐普夫图中的指数显著不同。这一发现揭示了主要语系的潜在结构和组织，为语言多样性和分布的本质提供了有趣的见解。
