The common cause principle in historical linguistics

Despite the platitude that analytic philosophy is deeply concerned with lan guage, philosophers of science have paid little attention to methodological issues that arise within historical linguistics. I broach this topic by ar guing that many inferences in historical linguistics conform to Reichenbach 's common cause principle (CCP). Although the scope of CCP is narrower than many have thought, inferences about the genealogies of languages are parti cularly apt for reconstruction using CCP. Quantitative approaches to langua ge comparison are readily understood as methods for detecting the correlati ons that serve as premises for common cause inferences, and potential sourc es of error in historical linguistics correspond to well-known limitations of CCP.