Microsoft Word - langjql.rtf

Statistical properties of the taxonomic classification of human languages are studied. It is shown that, at the highest levels of the taxonomic hierarchy, the frequency of taxon members as a function of the number of languages belonging to each member decays as a power law. This feature reveals that a self-similar structure underlies the taxonomy of languages, exactly as observed in the taxonomic classification of biological species. Such an analogy is a clue to the evolutionary foundation of language classification based on long-range comparison. Running title: Self-similarity in language taxonomy