2003/04/01 by Kateřina Rexová, Daniel Frynta, Jan Zrzavý · 7 citations
Arts and Humanities · Social Sciences · Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology · #Linguistics and language evolution #Language and cultural evolution #Forensic and Genetic Research
paper · doi:10.1111/j.1096-0031.2003.tb00299.x
openalex publication_date 2003/04/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/23
Abstract The phylogeny of the Indo‐European (IE) language family is reconstructed by application of the cladistic methodology to the lexicostatistical dataset collected by Dyen (about 200 meanings, 84 speech varieties, the Hittite language used as a functional outgroup). Three different methods of character coding provide trees that show: (a) the presence of four groups, viz., Balto‐Slavonic clade, Romano‐Germano‐Celtic clade, Armenian‐Greek group, and Indo‐Iranian group (the two last groups possibly paraphyletic); (b) the unstable position of the Albanian language; (c) the unstable pattern of the basalmost IE differentiation; but (d) the probable existence of the Balto‐Slavonic–Indo‐Iranian (“satem”) and the Romano‐Germano‐Celtic (+Albanian?) superclades. The results are compared with the phenetic approach to lexicostatistical data, the results of which are significantly less informative concerning the basal pattern. The results suggest a predominantly branching pattern of the basic vocabulary phylogeny and little borrowing of individual words. Different scenarios of IE differentiation based on archaeological and genetic information are discussed.