An Examination of the Article "Cladistic Analysis of Languages: Indo-European Classification Based on Lexicostatistical Data"

Cladistics is defined as "a classification scheme based on the historical sequence of divergence events (phylogeny); also used to identify a method of inferring phylogenies based on the presence of sheared derived characters (synapomorphies)" (Freeman, 2001). A paper was found on "cladistic analysis of languages: Indo-European classification based on lexicostatistical data," by examining this article a better understanding of how cladistical experimentation is preformed, can be achieved. In order to understand this, an examination of the goals of the experiment, the materials and methods, and the results obtained from the study must be accomplished. "Many languages are believed to be related in a hierarchical tree-like pattern, and it is therefore possible to apply cladistic methods to infer language trees" (Rexova, 2003).
This study focuses on "the phylogeny of the Indo-European (IE) language family reconstructed by application of the cladistic methodology to the lexicostatistical dataset by Dyen" (Rexova, 2003). This study attempts to apply the "cladistic methodology to the analysis of the basic vocabulary data" (Rexova, 2003). …