Study on Similarity among Indian Languages Using Language Verification Framework

Abstract

Majority of Indian languages have originated from two language families, namely, Indo-European and Dravidian. Therefore, certain kind of similarity among languages of a particular family can be expected to exist. Also, languages spoken in neighboring regions show certain similarity since there happens to be a lot of intermingling between population of neighboring regions. This paper develops a technique to measure similarity among Indian languages in a novel way, using language verification framework. Four verification systems are designed for each language. Acceptance of one language as another, which relates to false acceptance in language verification framework, is used as a measure of similarity. If language A shows false acceptance more than a predefined threshold with language B, in at least three out of the four systems, then languages A and B are considered to be similar in this work. It is expected that the languages belonging to the same family should manifest their similarity in experimental results. Also, similarity between neighboring languages should be detected through experiments. Any deviation from such fact should be due to specific linguistic or historical reasons. This work analyzes any such scenario.