Recent applications of phylogenetic methods to historical linguistics have been criticized for
assuming a tree structure in which ancestral languages differentiate and split up into …

Four methods for inferring biological phylogenies were applied to lexical and structural data
of a representative sample of the Austronesian Family of languages. After introducing …

We claim that making sense of the typological diversity of languages demands a
historical/evolutionary approach. We are pleased that the target paper (Dunn et al. 2011a) …

Over the past two decades, many of the major controversies in historical linguistics have
centred on language classification. Some of these controversies have been concentrated …

One of the best-known types of non-independence between languages is caused by
genealogical relationships due to descent from a common ancestor. These can be …

Since the early 1970s, biologists have debated whether evolution is punctuated by
speciation events with bursts of cladogenetic changes, or whether evolution tends to be of a …

Linguists have traditionally represented patterns of divergence within a language family in
terms of either a 'splits' model, corresponding to a branching family tree structure, or the …

This paper presents a new method for determining the evolutionary history of related
languages, combining a careful implementation of the comparative method with recent …

Historical linguists have always been interested in grouping varieties and languages
together into subgroups and families. However, their methodologies for doing so, and for …

Several databases have been compiled with the aim of documenting the distribution of
typological features across the world's languages. This paper looks at ways of utilizing this …