The results make for interesting reading. The technique reveals linguistics constructions related to tense in common languages such as “-ed” in English and “-te” in German, as well as the words and phrases that perform the same functions in much less common languages such as the past tense signifier “den” in the Gourmanchema language from Burkino Faso, and “yi” in Yalunka, spoken in Mali, and so on. This work allows the researchers to create maps showing how languages using similar tense constructions are related (see diagram). That’s interesting work. Asgari and Schutze have developed a computational method to analyze the way people use the past, present, and future tense in over 1,000 languages. This is the largest cross-language computational study ever undertaken. Indeed, the number of languages involved is an order of magnitude greater than in other studies.
Linguistics Breakthrough Heralds Machine Translation for Thousands of Rare Languages - MIT Technology Review