Glottochronology proposes to date language splits arithmetically

Assembled from 24 blocks · 1 evidence · 34 related

1. Story
2. Morris Swadesh set out a method for converting the proportion of shared cognates in a fixed list of basic meanings into elapsed time since two languages diverged, assuming a universal replacement rate calibrated on documented histories. The proposal was attacked immediately and comprehensively: rates are not constant across meanings, languages or historical circumstances, and the cognacy judgements the arithmetic consumes are themselves the contested output of comparative work. Mainstream historical linguistics had largely abandoned the method by the 1970s.
3. Knowledge
4. The comparative method
5. Glottochronology
6. Glottochronology proposes to date language splits arithmetically
7. Connections
8. Glottochronology
9. The comparative method
10. Bayesian phylogenetic dating of language families
11. Glottochronology proposes to date language splits arithmetically
12. Language death
13. Contact, borrowing and the limits of resemblance
14. The regularity of sound change
15. Bayesian phylogenetic dating of language families
16. Sino-Tibetan
17. Afroasiatic
18. Proto-Indo-European
19. Sir William Jones
20. The Neogrammarian doctrine: sound laws admit no exception
21. Glottochronology proposes to date language splits arithmetically
22. Language in the Americas, and its rejection
23. Evidence
24. Supports the general account in this pack of the comparative method, the regularity principle, contact and borrowing, glottochronology and its critics, and the definition of a language isolate. V55 verification basis: this session had no access to any source — WebFetch was egress-blocked for every host attempted and the WebSearch budget was exhausted before authoring — so the cited work was not retrieved, and no page, volume or figure quoted from it was re-checked. No chapter or page is cited, because the book was not opened in this session; the citation identifies the work a curator should check the general account against. This is the source named in the Journey declaration.