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Recent work in computational linguistic phylogeny

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  19 February 2026

Joseph F. Eska  and
Don Ringe
Joseph F. Eska*
Affiliation:
Virginia Polytechnic Institute & State University
Don Ringe*
Affiliation:
University of Pennsylvania
*
Eska, Department of English, Virginia Polytechnic Institute & State University, Blacksburg, VA 24061 [eska@vt.edu]
Ringe , Department of Linguistics, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA 19104 [dringe@unagi.cis.upenn.edu]
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Extract

A number of recent attempts by nonlinguists to reconstruct linguistic evolutionary trees have made news. Reconstructions of the phylogeny of the Indo-European (IE) family of languages are especially well represented; well-known examples include Rexová et al. 2003, Gray & Atkinson 2003—which is discussed by Searls (2003) and briefly reported in U.S. news & world report (10 December 2003)—and Forster & Toth 2003, which also generated considerable attention in the popular media. Scientific linguists have not been impressed for a variety of reasons. Though no two of the publications in question exhibit exactly the same weaknesses, all can be impugned on one or more of the following grounds: the linguistic data employed have not been adequately analyzed, or—in some cases—even competently analyzed; the model of language change employed has not been shown to fit the known facts of language change; attempts to fix the dates of prehistoric languages have ignored the fatal shortcomings of glottochronology discovered by Bergsland and Vogt (1962; see further §4); the researchers assume that vocabulary replacement is governed by a LEXICAL CLOCK (similar to the controversial MOLECULAR CLOCK posited by some biological cladists); and/or the data set used is too small to yield statistically reliable conclusions.

Information

Type
Discussion Notes
Information
Language , Volume 80 , Issue 3 , September 2004 , pp. 569 - 582
Copyright
Copyright © 2004 Linguistic Society of America

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