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The Language Families

How these connect

The comparative method and what it relates to. Every line is an evidence-backed relation, and the arrangement is fixed — this address draws this picture, today and next year.

evidence_for — Two of its branches are documented for roughly five thousand years - Egyptian from about the start of the third millennium BCE, Akkadian not long after - so the family is where reconstruction can be checked against a written record rather than only against its own output.concerns — The rejection of the Amerind proposal turned on the claim that resemblance without demonstrated regular correspondence is not evidence of common descent.depends_on — The cognate matrices the models consume are produced by ordinary comparative work, so a phylogenetic date can be no better than the correspondences underlying its coding.constrained_by — Every undescribed language that ceases to be spoken removes correspondences the method needs, so the evidence base is shrinking faster than it is being recorded.precedes — The Third Anniversary Discourse of 1786 stated the observation the method was built to test - that Sanskrit, Greek and Latin share verb roots and grammatical forms too systematically for accident - without itself supplying the regular correspondences that became the method.constrained_by — Borrowing can produce the resemblances the method looks for, so its conclusions hold only to the extent that loans can be identified and excluded.depends_on — The comparative method can only extract correspondences if sound change applies to every word in the same environment rather than word by word.derived_from — The reconstruction is an output of the comparative method rather than an attestation, which is why its forms are written with an asterisk.constrained_by — Extensive monosyllabism, heavy tonal systems and sparse inflectional morphology leave the comparative method less of the grammatical material it depends on, which is why a family second only to Indo-European by speakers has a far less settled internal structure.Language in the Americas, and its rejectionLanguage in the Americas,…AfroasiaticAfroasiaticSino-TibetanSino-TibetanProto-Indo-EuropeanProto-Indo-EuropeanBayesian phylogenetic dating of language familiesBayesian phylogenetic dat…The comparative methodThe comparative methodSir William JonesSir William JonesContact, borrowing and the limits of resemblanceContact, borrowing and th…Language deathLanguage deathThe regularity of sound changeThe regularity of sound c…
10 drawn · 9 reachable and not drawn · positions derived from object ids, never from a simulation
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Every relation drawn, in words9
  1. Afroasiatic · evidence_for · The comparative method

    Two of its branches are documented for roughly five thousand years - Egyptian from about the start of the third millennium BCE, Akkadian not long after - so the family is where reconstruction can be checked against a written record rather than only against its own output.

  2. Language in the Americas, and its rejection · concerns · The comparative method

    The rejection of the Amerind proposal turned on the claim that resemblance without demonstrated regular correspondence is not evidence of common descent.

  3. Bayesian phylogenetic dating of language families · depends_on · The comparative method

    The cognate matrices the models consume are produced by ordinary comparative work, so a phylogenetic date can be no better than the correspondences underlying its coding.

  4. The comparative method · constrained_by · Language death

    Every undescribed language that ceases to be spoken removes correspondences the method needs, so the evidence base is shrinking faster than it is being recorded.

  5. Sir William Jones · precedes · The comparative method

    The Third Anniversary Discourse of 1786 stated the observation the method was built to test - that Sanskrit, Greek and Latin share verb roots and grammatical forms too systematically for accident - without itself supplying the regular correspondences that became the method.

  6. The comparative method · constrained_by · Contact, borrowing and the limits of resemblance

    Borrowing can produce the resemblances the method looks for, so its conclusions hold only to the extent that loans can be identified and excluded.

  7. The comparative method · depends_on · The regularity of sound change

    The comparative method can only extract correspondences if sound change applies to every word in the same environment rather than word by word.

  8. Proto-Indo-European · derived_from · The comparative method

    The reconstruction is an output of the comparative method rather than an attestation, which is why its forms are written with an asterisk.

  9. Sino-Tibetan · constrained_by · The comparative method

    Extensive monosyllabism, heavy tonal systems and sparse inflectional morphology leave the comparative method less of the grammatical material it depends on, which is why a family second only to Indo-European by speakers has a far less settled internal structure.