The new arboretum of Indo-European “trees”. Can new algorithms reveal the phylogeny and even prehistory of Indo-European?*

2007/08/01 by Hans J. Holm · 1 citation
Social Sciences · Arts and Humanities · Mathematics · #Language and cultural evolution #Linguistics and language evolution #Linguistics and Cultural Studies #Prehistory #Historical linguistics #Slavic languages #Population #Informatics #Linguistics #History #Genealogy #Mathematics #Geography #Algorithm #Demography #Sociology #Philosophy #Political science #Archaeology #Law

paper · doi:10.1080/09296170701378916

openalex publication_date 2007/08/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/29

Abstract

Specialization in linguistics vs. biological informatics leads to widespread misunderstandings and false results caused by poor knowledge of the essential conditions of the respective methods and data applied. These are analyzed and the insights used to assess the recent glut of attempts to employ methods from biological informatics in establishing new phylogenies of Indo-European languages.

Citations

• Cet étrange objet social : l’association. Jean-Louis Laville, Politique de l’association, Seuil, collection Economie humaine, Paris, 2010.
• Language-tree divergence times support the Anatolian theory of Indo-European origin
• Cladistic analysis of languages: Indo‐European classification based on lexicostatistical data
• Indo‐European and Computational Cladistics
• A comparison of phylogenetic reconstruction methods on an Indo-European dataset
• Bayesian Inference of Phylogeny and Its Impact on Evolutionary Biology

Cited by

• Anatolian hypothesis [wikipedia]

Related

• Do ‘language trees with sampled ancestors’ really support a ‘hybrid model’ for the origin of Indo-European? Thoughts on the most recent attempt at yet another IE phylogeny
• Automated languages phylogeny from Levenshtein distance
• Rapid radiation of the inner Indo-European languages: an advanced approach to Indo-European lexicostatistics
• Mapping the Origins and Expansion of the Indo-European Language Family
• Three tree priors and five datasets: A study of the effect of tree priors in Indo-European phylogenetics