Urheimat in Lithuania? (was Re: the Wheel and Dating PIE or NW-IE)

[Robert Whiting]

On Sat, 25 Mar 2000, Vidhyanath Rao wrote:

> "Brian M. Scott" <BMScott at stratos.net> wrote:

>> I fell into the same trap at first, but Bob's right, assuming
>> that one can always classify one branch as innovating and the
>> other as non-innovating.  Start at the root, and at each node
>> follow the non-innovating branch; you *must* end up at some
>> leaf of the tree.

> You >may< come to a leaf that is non-innovating for all >branch
> determining< innovations. A branch might innovate without splitting
> further. Also the non-innovating branch might go extinct, while other
> branches continue to split.

All true, but there will >still< be a minimal path from the top of the
tree to some leaf that represents a surviving language.

Bob Whiting
whiting at cc.helsinki.fi