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From: alderson@netcom.com (Richard M. Alderson III)
Subject: Re: Roots of Lithuanian language ?
In-Reply-To: clary@sesostris.meteo.fr's message of 26 May 1995 14:25:26 GMT
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Date: Fri, 26 May 1995 17:40:54 GMT
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In article <3q4ocm$otb@news.cict.fr> clary@sesostris.meteo.fr (CLARY Olivier)
writes:

>In article <D941ED.H2H@midway.uchicago.edu> deb5@midway.uchicago.edu
>writes:

>>The _dtv-Atlas zur deutschen Sprache_, a masterpiece of concision,
>>includes examples of both "family tree" and "wave" models.  [...]

>Thank you for your answer. I am not a linguist, so I wonder how an
>"innovation wave" model is different: isn't the wave a new branch?

No.  Or not exactly.

The tree model, taken at face value, involves a set of bifurcations
(or trifurcations) with no further interaction after the split.  The
fact that this is not usually the case leads us to the wave model, in
which innovations start in one dialect and spread, sometimes with
generalization, sometimes with restriction, to other dialects, without
a clear branch-like split.

The wave model is also consonant with areal phenomena, as in the
Balkans or among languages of California, in which features are found
in unrelated (or not closely related) languages.
-- 
Rich Alderson   You know the sort of thing that you can find in any dictionary
                of a strange language, and which so excites the amateur philo-
                logists, itching to derive one tongue from another that they
                know better: a word that is nearly the same in form and meaning
                as the corresponding word in English, or Latin, or Hebrew, or
                what not.
                                                --J. R. R. Tolkien,
alderson@netcom.com                               _The Notion Club Papers_
