I have been using Cog to compare some languages with recent data from the Uruwa valley and I want to make sure I am using it correctly. I do not know the language and therefore I haven't separated stems and affixes and stuff like that. Luckily I believe has a method for accounting for that. I have been using the partial method for alignment, the blair method for cognate identification, going through and identifying similar consonants, and then after that I just manually go through and mark cognates or non cognates for what it looks like the program got wrong. Does this seem like an adequate method for accurately measuring the relation of 2 languages?
Also, let's say that in your word list you have the word, "to throw" and one person gives you the word for 'to throw' while the other gives you the word for 'to toss.' This might make the languages seem more dissimilar than they actually are. Should you give them the word from the first list to see if they have the same word or should you not tell them? Any help on this would be awesome! Let me know. Thanks!
I have been using Cog to compare some languages with recent data from the Uruwa valley and I want to make sure I am using it correctly. I do not know the language and therefore I haven't separated stems and affixes and stuff like that. Luckily I believe has a method for accounting for that. I have been using the partial method for alignment, the blair method for cognate identification, going through and identifying similar consonants, and then after that I just manually go through and mark cognates or non cognates for what it looks like the program got wrong. Does this seem like an adequate method for accurately measuring the relation of 2 languages? Also, let's say that in your word list you have the word, "to throw" and one person gives you the word for 'to throw' while the other gives you the word for 'to toss.' This might make the languages seem more dissimilar than they actually are. Should you give them the word from the first list to see if they have the same word or should you not tell them? Any help on this would be awesome! Let me know. Thanks!