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Is the "tree" an adequate structure to describe relations between languages? Wouldn't directed acyclic graph (DAG) be better? IANAL (I'm not a linguist), but m
by Miiko 5y ago
Is the "tree" an adequate structure to describe relations between languages? Wouldn't directed acyclic graph (DAG) be better?
IANAL (I'm not a linguist), but my understanding that languages - especially of people living close - do interact and influence each other, and discounting that interaction cannot give the whole picture. That may explain why
> it failed to reproduce a previously published relationship between Korean and the other languages in the Altaic grouping.
Does it makes sense to anybody?
- phreeza 5y agoWhy would the graph even be acyclic?
- bradrn 5y agoThese days the preferred model seems to be the wave model [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wave_model https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wave_model], which is exactly as you describe: changes diffuse out from a central area, and different places receive different changes. This is generally approximated as a tree in the common case where a bunch of changes diffuse out to the same place, then stop.