The dialect chain tree
A perennial conflict in historical linguistics centers around the theoretical and practical virtues of tree-like
divergence and wave-like diffusion. This paper presents the Dialect Chain Tree, an extension of the tree model that incorporates
both tree-like descent and disintegration of dialect chains in a systematic fashion. As such, it provides a formalization and
sharpening of Ross’ (
1997: 212–228) linkage concept that allows integration into
quantitative approaches.
Article outline
- 1.Introduction
- 2.Dialect disintegration
- 3.Related work
- 4.Assumptions underlying the new model
- 5.The dialect chain tree
- 5.1Description
- 5.2Formal definition
- 5.3Tree-like split as a special case of dialect divergence
- 6.Maximum Parsimony for the DCT
- 6.1Parsimony score and character coding
- 6.2Order- and parsimony-equivalence between DCTs
- 6.3A three-taxon example
- 7.Conclusion
- Acknowledgements
- Notes
- Abbreviations
-
References