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The main discriminant between these two processes is their impact on cognacy within a family of languages or dialects, since the former modifies the subsets of cognate terms and the latter does not. The automated cognate detection, which is here performed following a new approach inspired by graph theory, is a key preliminary step that allows us to later measure the effects of the slow modification process. We test our dual approach on the family of Malagasy dialects using a cladistic analysis, which provides strong evidence that lexical replacements and gradual lexical modifications are two random processes that separately drive the evolution of languages.<\/jats:p>","DOI":"10.1162\/coli_a_00471","type":"journal-article","created":{"date-parts":[[2023,1,13]],"date-time":"2023-01-13T19:34:56Z","timestamp":1673638496000},"page":"301-323","update-policy":"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1162\/mitpressjournals.corrections.policy","source":"Crossref","is-referenced-by-count":2,"title":["Gradual Modifications and Abrupt Replacements: Two Stochastic Lexical Ingredients of Language Evolution"],"prefix":"10.1162","volume":"49","author":[{"given":"Michele","family":"Pasquini","sequence":"first","affiliation":[{"name":"Istituto per le Applicazioni del Calcolo, \u201cMauro Picone\u201d - CNR, Rome, Italy. michele.pasquini@gmail.com"}],"role":[{"role":"author","vocabulary":"crossref"}]},{"given":"Maurizio","family":"Serva","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Dipartimento di Ingegneria e Scienze, dell\u2019Informazione e Matematica, Universit\u00e0 dell\u2019Aquila, L\u2019Aquila, Italy. serva@univaq.it"}],"role":[{"role":"author","vocabulary":"crossref"}]},{"given":"Davide","family":"Vergni","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Istituto per le Applicazioni del Calcolo, \u201cMauro Picone\u201d - CNR, Rome, Italy. davide.vergni@cnr.it"}],"role":[{"role":"author","vocabulary":"crossref"}]}],"member":"281","published-online":{"date-parts":[[2023,6,1]]},"reference":[{"key":"2023061215395900400_bib1","first-page":"75","article-title":"Borneo as a cross-roads for comparative Austronesian linguistics","volume-title":"The Austronesians in History","author":"Adelaar","year":"1995"},{"key":"2023061215395900400_bib2","first-page":"205","article-title":"The Indonesian migrations to Madagascar: Making sense of the multidisciplinary evidence","volume-title":"Austronesian Diaspora and the Ethnogenesis of People in Indonesian Archipelago","author":"Adelaar","year":"2006"},{"key":"2023061215395900400_bib3","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","first-page":"123","DOI":"10.1353\/ol.2012.0003","article-title":"Malagasy phonological history and Bantu influence","volume":"51","author":"Adelaar","year":"2012","journal-title":"Oceanic Linguistics"},{"issue":"4","key":"2023061215395900400_bib4","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","first-page":"461","DOI":"10.1007\/s10791-008-9066-8","article-title":"A comparison of extrinsic clustering evaluation metrics based on formal constraints","volume":"12","author":"Amig\u00f3","year":"2009","journal-title":"Information Retrieval"},{"key":"2023061215395900400_bib5","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","first-page":"167","DOI":"10.1515\/LITY.2009.009","article-title":"Adding typology to lexicostatistics: A combined approach to language classification","volume":"13","author":"Bakker","year":"2009","journal-title":"Linguistic Typology"},{"key":"2023061215395900400_bib6","first-page":"59","article-title":"Les arriv\u00e9es Austron\u00e9siennes \u00e0 Madagascar: Vagues ou continuum?","volume":"35\u201336","author":"Beaujard","year":"2003","journal-title":"\u00c9tudes Oc\u00e9an Indien"},{"key":"2023061215395900400_bib7","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","first-page":"69","DOI":"10.1080\/00672700709480451","article-title":"New palaeozoogeographical evidence for the settlement of Madagascar","volume":"42","author":"Blench","year":"2007","journal-title":"Azania: Archaeological Research in Africa"},{"key":"2023061215395900400_bib8","first-page":"18","article-title":"The Austronesians in Madagascar and their interaction with the Bantu of the East African Coast: Surveying the linguistic evidence for domestic and translocated animals","volume":"18","author":"Blench","year":"2008","journal-title":"Studies in Philippine Languages and Cultures"},{"key":"2023061215395900400_bib9","first-page":"31","article-title":"Faunal names in Malagasy: Their etymologies and implications for the prehistory of the East African Coast","volume-title":"Eleventh International Conference on Austronesian Linguistics (11 ICAL)","author":"Blench","year":"2009"},{"key":"2023061215395900400_bib10","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","first-page":"99","DOI":"10.3115\/v1\/P14-2017","article-title":"Automatic detection of cognates using orthographic alignment","volume":"2","author":"Ciobanu","year":"2014","journal-title":"Proceedings of the 52nd Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics"},{"key":"2023061215395900400_bib11","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","first-page":"1047","DOI":"10.3115\/v1\/D14-1112","article-title":"An etymological approach to cross-language orthographic similarity. 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