Talk:Historical linguistics

message: There are two assumptions that seem to be implicitly made in this page: that language evolution can be described as a tree-like branching process, and that parents who learned language X from their parents will teach the same language to their children.  Are these "dogmas" fundamented/discussed somewhere?Jorge Stolfi 05:17, 4 May 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: The former isn't 100% true, of course - see Michif language.  It's just a useful approximation that in practice works almost all the time, like thermodynamics; the evidence for it is simply the statistical idea that so much of the language evolution that we've examined (Indo-European, Semitic, Algonquin, Pama-Nyungan...) works that way.  The second, of course, is false - there must be an article on language shift.  But it is true for the minority of languages that aren't in the process of dying out... - Mustafaa 06:10, 4 May 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: But I agree that the article should make those points explicit. - Mustafaa 17:34, 4 May 2004 (UTC)

text: Hoenigswald, Henry M. 1990. "Does language grow on trees? Ancestry, descent, regularity". Proc. Am. Philos. Soc. 134(1):10-18. Also by Hoenigswald, "Language family trees, topological and metrical", in Biological Metaphor and Cladistic Classification: An interdisciplinary perspective, eds. H. M. Hoenigswald and L. F. Wiener, (1987) pp. 257-267. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by Bn (talk • contribs) 17:26, 11 August 2010 (UTC)
thread_title: The tree model

message: "Norwegian and Danish have drastically simplified their grammar." I don't know either language (nor proto-Germanic), but I seriously doubt this statement.  They have probably simplified their *inflectional morphology*, but there's more to grammar than morphology; and often when a language simplifies in one area, it complexifies in others. (Ok, I made that word up :-).)  In this case, I'm betting the modern syntax is more complex.  But I'll leave it to someone who actually knows about the history of these languages to change this if need be. Mcswell (talk) 03:52, 5 July 2011 (UTC)
thread_title: Conservative, Innovative, Archaic

message: I've rewritten the intro so it really is about historical linguistics and not just reconstructing proto-languages. I've also put some modern stuff in the bibliography.
Given the existing pages on comparative method and masss lexical comparison, I think most of the other material on this pages could usefully be moved there, and we can start to look at some of the other material that should be covered on this page. --Pfold 21:07, 28 March 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Revised Intro 

message: Watchers of this page may be interested in a discussion currently ongoing at Template:Berber languages. - Lameen Souag (talk) 16:20, 24 October 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  [[Template:Berber languages]] 

message: I removed a weird chart that compared 'traditional' and 'modern' comparative linguistics. It included such absurd claims as that modern comparative linguistics is more interested in syntax than in phonology. One look at a journal such as historische Sprachforschung would prove this false. If there is anything of value in this chart it must be totally rewritten and thoroughly cited. Tibetologist (talk) 17:18, 1 November 2011 (UTC)
thread_title: Weird chart

message: Wonderful article, I love it. Sticks close to the textbooks but avoids plagiarism (just barely) as far as I can see now. I noticed a certain overkill of blue links. The articles linked might also appear in the two boxes as well as in See also. "See also" is intended for see ALSO. First you see then you see ALSO this other stuff. No need to repeat every blue link there. So, I am going to start paring down "See also." For the linguistics box, which is locked, I have suggested it be made collapsed with expandable sections. The relevant section would be expanded in the appropriate article. Otherwise we either have to halt its expansion or run it off the easily visible page. I put this suggestion in the discussion for the box. Can be easily done, with consensus. Otherwise, it isn't much use. It needs also a size parameter, without which it is just so much clutter, and a place for a pic, without which it can be pretty boring. Won't you support that suggestion?Botteville (talk) 11:13, 18 March 2015 (UTC)
thread_title: See also

message: It isn't my field of expertise and I don't have time to research at the moment, but it seems to me that the work done on evolutionary/contact modelling done over the last 20–25 years by the likes of Don Ringe, Tandy Warnow etc, would be a worthy addition to the article.
Grant | Talk 08:09, 16 September 2016 (UTC)
thread_title:  New section/paragraph + link needed on [[Quantitative comparative linguistics]]? 

message: It's disappointing to find in the "Sub-fields of study" part of this article that the para on Phonology doesn't deal with historical aspects at all - it is just a brief summary of what Phonology is. That is information which can already be read in more comprehensive form elsewhere in WP. Was this intentional? RoachPeter (talk) 10:42, 19 March 2017 (UTC)
replies: text: The whole Sub-fields section is poor and could do with a complete revamp. --Pfold (talk) 14:06, 19 March 2017 (UTC)
thread_title:  Sub-fields of study: Phonology 

message: In the section on the sub-field of phonology, it is not mentioned how this relates to the field of historical linguistics. It would be helpful to put this in, as had been done with the other sections such as morphology and syntax. 
Since this is an article on historical linguistics, it would also probably be better if there was a stronger emphasis on how all the sub-fields fit into historical linguistics rather than primarily describing the sub-fields and including only one short sentence connecting the two. 
Alisab (talk) 19:26, 7 April 2017 (UTC)
replies: text: Well over two years later that's still true. Barefoot through the chollas (talk) 01:30, 9 September 2019 (UTC)
thread_title:  Relating sub-fields to historical linguistics 

message: This entire article is severely lacking in direct citations. As of now, there are only 3 sources cited. 
As for the section on Evolutionary Context– I'm not entirely sure where the original creator wanted to take this but I feel that a good next step would be to define "Lamarckian acquired characteristics of languages" and how this is different from research into the origins of human language. Pau.guerra (talk) 03:45, 10 April 2017 (UTC)
thread_title:  Citations!! And "Evolutionary Context" Section

message: This section looks like it could use expandingMarkOG (talk) 16:06, 3 May 2017 (UTC)
thread_title:  Evolutionary Context 

message: This article's intro is very poor. I don't know how sensible it is to have a "list" in the intro. I am also in disagreement with the first/opening line. Historical linguistics is not otherwise called diachronic linguistics. Historical linguistics is synchronic and diachronic both. Heartily (talk) 19:06, 9 December 2020 (UTC)
thread_title:  Problem with the Intro