MATHEMATICAL APPROACHES TO COMPARATIVE LINGUISTICS

The inference of the evolutionary history of a set of languages is a c omplex problem, Although some languages are known to be related throug h descent from common ancestral languages, for other languages determi ning whether such a relationship holds is itself a difficult problem. In this paper we report on new methods, developed by linguists Johanna Nichols (University of California, Berkeley), Donald Ringe and Ann Ta ylor (University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia), and me, for answering some of the most difficult questions in this domain, These methods an d the results of the analyses based on these methods were presented in November 1995 at the Symposium on the Frontiers of Science held by th e National Academy of Sciences.