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Article published In:
Understanding language genealogy: Alternatives to the tree model
Edited by Siva Kalyan, Alexandre François and Harald Hammarström
[Journal of Historical Linguistics 9:1] 2019
► pp. 128–167

Save the trees

Why we need tree models in linguistic reconstruction (and when we should apply them)

| Centre des Recherches Linguistiques sur l’Asie Orientale
| Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History
Skepticism regarding the tree model has a long tradition in historical linguistics. Although scholars have emphasized that the tree model and its long-standing counterpart, the wave theory, are not necessarily incompatible, the opinion that family trees are unrealistic and should be completely abandoned in the field of historical linguistics has always enjoyed a certain popularity. This skepticism has further increased with the advent of recently proposed techniques for data visualization which seem to confirm that we can study language history without trees. In this article, we show that the concrete arguments that have been brought up in favor of achronistic wave models do not hold. By comparing the phenomenon of incomplete lineage sorting in biology with processes in linguistics, we show that data which do not seem as though they can be explained using trees can indeed be explained without turning to diffusion as an explanation. At the same time, methodological limits in historical reconstruction might easily lead to an overestimation of regularity, which may in turn appear as conflicting patterns when the researcher is trying to reconstruct a coherent phylogeny. We illustrate how, in several instances, trees can benefit language comparison, although we also discuss their shortcomings in modeling mixed languages. While acknowledging that not all aspects of language history are tree-like, and that integrated models which capture both vertical and lateral language relations may depict language history more realistically than trees do, we conclude that all models claiming that vertical language relations can be completely ignored are essentially wrong: either they still tacitly draw upon family trees or they only provide a static display of data and thus fail to model temporal aspects of language history.
Keywords: tree model, Historical Glottometry, phylogenetic networks, incomplete lineage sorting
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Dendrophobia and dendrophilia in linguistics
    • 2.1Tree thinking in Schleicher’s work
    • 2.2Tree skepticism in the work of Schmidt and Schuchardt
    • 2.3Early arguments against the Stammbaumtheorie
  • 3.The new debate on trees and waves
    • 3.1Phylogenetic tree reconstruction after the quantitative turn
    • 3.2Linguistic data and data-display networks
    • 3.3Shared innovations and Historical Glottometry
  • 4.Saving the trees from the critics
    • 4.1Inherited variation and incomplete lineage sorting
      • 4.1.1Alternations
      • 4.1.2Proto-variation
      • 4.1.3Concluding remarks
    • 4.2The problem of identifying lexical innovations
      • 4.2.1Undetectable borrowings
      • 4.2.2Nativization of loanwords
  • 5.The benefit of trees in language comparison
    • 5.1Parallel innovations
    • 5.2Reconstruction of the Ursprache
    • 5.3Directionality of change
    • 5.4Common tendencies of language change
    • 5.5Language change and migration history
  • 6.The limits of the tree model
  • 7.Conclusion
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • Abbreviations
  • References
Published online: 2 July 2019
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/jhl.17008.mat
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