About the estimates of divergence times of Uralic languages

[jphakkin at mappi.helsinki.fi]

Thank you, Terhi and Outi. A new question arises:

> Based on the locations of the given calibration points and amount of  
> lexical differences between the languages, the program analyses the  
> rates of changes of languages or language subfamilies.

Does this mean that it would be useful to “fork” out the fastest and  
slowest evolving languages/branches to get some frames for the rate of  
change? For example, both phonologically and lexically fastest  
evolving Finnic language would be Livonian, I think; and the slowest  
evolving… hmm, phonologically Vepsian? At the lexical level I’m not  
sure.

It would be safe to compare the languages of the same branch, because  
then we know that they (after the split) have developed the same time.  
If the assumed intermediate protolanguages are those which we want to  
study, then the calibration points could not be based on them.


Jaakko


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