[An-lang] Proto-Dialect chains

[Piotr Gasiorowski]

Some linguists (as well as early evolutionary biologists) realised the
importance of shared innovations as early as the 1860s. August
Schleicher's family-tree model was at least partly inspired by Darwin's
theory of evolution (in 1863 he published a book entitled _Die
Darwinsche Theorie und die Sprachwissenschaft_). However, the real
source of the idea that only shared innovations (as opposed to
retentions) could provide evidence of genetic subgrouping was stemmatics
(the study of manuscript affiliation), which developed during the first
half of the nineteenth century. There's a whole collection of articles
devoted to the those interdisciplinary connections:

Hoenigswald, H.M. and Wiener L.F. (eds.). 1987. _Biological Metaphor and
Cladistic Classification: An Interdisciplinary Perspective_.
Philadelphia: U. of Pennsylvania Press.

I have also found this very interesting paper online:

http://rjohara.net/cv/1996Milan.html

Piotr Gasiorowski
Adam Mickiewicz University
Poznan, Poland



18-07-03 20:02, Isidore Dyen wrote:

 > I is my impression that it was Brugmann that first enunciated the
principle, but I cannot at this moment say where. An active
Indoeuropeanist should be able to direct you to it. ID
 >
 > ----- Original Message -----
 > From: "William H. Baxter" <wbaxter at umich.edu>
 > Date: Friday, July 18, 2003 11:57 am
 > Subject: Re: [An-lang] Proto-Dialect chains
 >
 >> Can anyone help me find the intellectual pedigree (whether within
linguistics or from elsewhere) of the principle that subgroups should be
defined by shared innovations?  I think it's a fine principle, but I am
puzzled by the fact that some historical linguists take it as a basic
assumption (and don't necessarily remember where they got the idea
from), while others seem to be unaware of it, or at least fail to apply
it.  There seems to be a good deal of variation from subfield to subfield.
 >>
 >> Specifically, where did this idea originate (in biology, I suspect),
who was first to introduce it to linguistics, where, and under what
circumstances?
 >>
 >> Bill Baxter
 >> University of Michigan






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