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Cladistic representation of the Mayan linguistic family, going back 4000 years.(The numbers represent proposed historical dates in the Common Era).. In historical linguistics, the tree model (also Stammbaum, genetic, or cladistic model) is a model of the evolution of languages analogous to the concept of a family tree, particularly a phylogenetic tree in the biological evolution of species.
The term family is a metaphor borrowed from biology, with the tree model used in historical linguistics analogous to a family tree, or to phylogenetic trees of taxa used in evolutionary taxonomy. Linguists thus describe the daughter languages within a language family as being genetically related. [1]
Historical glottometry is a method used in historical linguistics. It is a quantitative, non-cladistic approach to language subgrouping. The aim of historical glottometry (HG) is to address the limitations of the tree model when applied to dialect continua and linkages. It acknowledges that the genealogical structure of a linkage typically ...
An areal feature is contrasted with genetic relationship determined similarity within the same language family. Features may diffuse from one dominant language to neighbouring languages (see "sprachbund"). Genetic relationships are represented in the family tree model of language change, and areal relationships are represented in the wave model.
Another method is based on the linguistic migration theory (first proposed by Edward Sapir), which states that the most likely candidate for the last homeland of a language family can be located in the area of its highest linguistic diversity. [3] This presupposes an established view about the internal subgrouping of the language family.
The tree model presumes that all the circles should be nested and never crosscut, but studies in dialectology and historical linguistics show that assumption to be usually wrong and suggest that the wave-based approach may be more realistic than the tree model. A genealogical family in which isoglosses intersect is called a dialect continuum or ...
This article is a list of language families. This list only includes primary language families that are accepted by the current academic consensus in the field of linguistics ; for language families that are not accepted by the current academic consensus in the field of linguistics, see the article " List of proposed language families ".
Language change; Language death; Language family; Language history; Latin word order; Law of Hobson-Jobson; Lexical diffusion; Lexicostatistics; Linguistic distance; Linguistic homeland; Linguistic monogenesis and polygenesis; Linguistic reconstruction; Linkage (linguistics) List of ancestor languages; List of languages by first written account ...