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Article published In: Demystifying New Methods in Historical Linguistics
Edited by Erich Round
[Diachronica 41:3] 2024
► pp. 307–329

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The dialect chain tree

ORCiD logo with link | Uppsala University
ORCiD logo with link | Uppsala University
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Available under the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) 4.0 license.

For any use beyond this license, please contact the publisher at rights@benjamins.nl.

Open Access publication of this article was funded through a Transformative Agreement with Uppsala University.

Published online: 2 July 2024
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https://doi.org/10.1075/dia.23014.elg
A perennial conflict in historical linguistics centers around the theoretical and practical virtues of tree-like divergence and wave-like diffusion. This paper presents the Dialect Chain Tree, an extension of the tree model that incorporates both tree-like descent and disintegration of dialect chains in a systematic fashion. As such, it provides a formalization and sharpening of Ross’ (. 1997. Social networks and kinds of speech community event. In Roger M. Blench & Matthew Spriggs (eds.), Archaeology and language, I, vol. 271 (One World Archaeology), 209–261. London & New York: Routledge.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar: 212–228) linkage concept that allows integration into quantitative approaches.
Résumé
Un conflit éternel en linguistique historique tourne autour des avantages théoriques et pratiques du modèle arborescent et de la théorie des vagues. Cet article présente le Dialect Chain Tree (arbre avec chaînes dialectales), une extension du modèle arborescent qui intègre de manière systématique la descendance en forme d’arbre et la désintégration des chaînes dialectales. Il fournit ainsi une formalisation et un raffinement du concept de linkage (lien) de Ross (. 1997. Social networks and kinds of speech community event. In Roger M. Blench & Matthew Spriggs (eds.), Archaeology and language, I, vol. 271 (One World Archaeology), 209–261. London & New York: Routledge.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar: 212–228) qui permet l’intégration des ruptures dialectales dans des analyses quantitatives.
Zusammenfassung
Ein regelmäßig wiederkehrender Konflikt in der historischen Linguistik dreht sich um die theoretischen und praktischen Vorteile der Stammbaumtheorie gegenüber der Wellentheorie. In diesem Artikel wird der Dialect Chain Tree vorgestellt, eine Erweiterung des Stammbaum­modells, der auf systematische Weise sowohl stammbaumähnliche Weitergabe als auch Disintegration von Dialektketten berücksichtigt. Er bietet somit eine Formalisierung und Präzisierung des (Verknüpfung-)Konzeptes von Ross (. 1997. Social networks and kinds of speech community event. In Roger M. Blench & Matthew Spriggs (eds.), Archaeology and language, I, vol. 271 (One World Archaeology), 209–261. London & New York: Routledge.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar: 212–228), was eine Integration in quantitative Ansätze ermöglicht.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Dialect disintegration
  • 3.Related work
  • 4.Assumptions underlying the new model
  • 5.The dialect chain tree
    • 5.1Description
    • 5.2Formal definition
    • 5.3Tree-like split as a special case of dialect divergence
  • 6.Maximum Parsimony for the DCT
    • 6.1Parsimony score and character coding
    • 6.2Order- and parsimony-equivalence between DCTs
    • 6.3A three-taxon example
  • 7.Conclusion
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • Abbreviations
  • References
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