Recent research has shown that language is sensitive to probabilities and a whole host of multivariate conditioning factors. However, most of the research in this arena centres on the grammar of English, and, as yet, there is no statistical modelling on the grammar of Latin, studies of which have to date been largely philological. The rise in advanced statistical methodologies allows us to capture the underlying structure of the rich datasets which this corpus only language can potentially offer. This thesis intends to remedy this deficit by applying probabilistic and multivariate models to a specific case study, namely the alternation of word order in Latin participle auxiliary clusters (pacs), which alternate between participle-auxiliary order, as in mortuus est ‘dead is’ and est mortuus ‘is dead’. The broad research questions to be explored in this thesis are the following: (i) To what extent are probabilistic models useful and reflective of Latin syntax variation phenomena?, (ii) What are the most useful statistical models to use?, (iii) What types of linguistic variables influence variation, (iv) What theoretical implications and explanations do the statistical models suggest?Against this backdrop, a dataset of 2409 pac observations are extracted from Late Re- publican texts of the first century bc. The dataset is annotated for an “information space” of thirty-three predictor variables from various levels of linguistics: text and lemma-based variability, prosody and phonology, grammar, semantics and pragmatics, and usage-based features such as frequency. The study exploits such statistical tools as generalized linear models and multilevel generalized linear models for the regression modelling of the binary categorical outcome. However, because of the potential collinearity, and the many predictor terms, amongst other issues, the use of these models to assess the joint effect of all predictors is particularly problematic. As such, the new statistical toolkit of random forests is utilized for evaluating the relative contribution of each predictor. Overall, it is found that Latin is indeed probabilistic in its grammar, and the condition- ing factors that govern it are spread widely throughout the language space. It is also noted that probabilistic models, such as the ones used in this study, have practical applications in traditional areas of philology, including textual criticism and literary stylistics.

El presente artículo ofrece una propuesta de clasificación de las variedades lingüísticas pertenecientes a la familia lingüística pano habladas en la provincia del Purús (región Ucayali, Perú). Los datos empleados recogen información léxica sobre nueve de estas variedades lingüísticas e información gramatical sobre ocho de ellas. Este material ha sido analizado empleando métodos filogenéticos y demuestra la pertinencia de agrupar a todas estas lenguas en un subgrupo al interior de la familia pano. Sin embargo, los resultados revelan una contradicción entre los datos provenientes del léxico y los datos provenientes de la gramática: los primeros sugieren la existencia de tres unidades lingüísticas bien delimitadas, mientras que los segundos sugieren la existencia de cuatro. Esto abre interesantespreguntas en torno a la posible existencia de un continuo dialectal yaminawa. Finalmente, este artículo discute la posición de la lengua iskonawa (una lengua pano obsolescente) en relación con las lenguas del Purús. Los datos muestran que el iskonawa exhibe una fuerte base purusina, que nos lleva a postularlo como una lengua muy cercana a las lenguas habladas en el Purús. / The present paper aims to provide a classification of the Panoan linguistic varieties spoken in the province of Purus (Ucayali, Peru). The data covers lexical information coming from nine Panoan linguistic varieties of the Purus province, as well as grammatical information taken from eight of them. The data have been analyzed using phylogenetic methods and show the need of including all these languages in a single Panoan subgroup. The results, however, show inconsistent trends between the lexical and the grammatical data: lexical data suggest the existence of three well-defined linguistic units, while the grammatical data point towards the existence of four. This fact opens interesting questions regarding the so-called Yaminawadialectal continuum. Finally, this paper discusses the position of Iskonawa (an obsolescent Panoan language) in relation to the languages of Purus. The data shows that Iskonawa is closely-related to the languages of the Purus region.