On using qualitative lexicostatistics to illuminate language history

Following certain aspects of the work on lexicostatistics carried out in the 1960s and published thereafter (Hooley 1971, Miller et al. 1971, Miller 1984) and thereby working in a tradition which has most recently been practised by Ringe et al. (1997, 2001), among others, I maintain that much of lasting value can be learned about linguistic interrelationships by using techniques which have been developed in work on qualitative (rather than merely quantitative) lexicostatistics, using character-based methods.