Language Classification by Numbers

• Approachable style
• Reveals startling results by applying new techniques to old data
• Deals with a wide range of languages, including Indo-European and South American languages
• Authors combine the expertise of historical linguistics and genetics
• Broad disciplinary range including language, genetics, archaeology, computer simulation, quantitative methods
• New perspectives on language contact and language change
• Will be used as a textbook in comparative linguistics

Readership: Scholars and advanced students of historical linguistics, language contact and change, and the classification of languages, including linguists, archaeologists, population geneticists, and anthopologists. Plus dedicated general readers interested in language families and language change.

April McMahon, University of Edinburgh, and Robert McMahon, Western General Hospital, Edinburgh

"There are many reasons to recommend Language Classification by Numbers...intelligent discussions..." - John Nerbonne, Linguistic Typology

"...this is a great book for raising questions." - Claire Bowern, Linguistic Typolog

"A gentle introduction...in which they address many of the fundamental questions concerning the application of quantitative and computational techniques, including phylogenetics, to questions in historical linguistics." - John Nerbonne, Linguistic Typology

1: How do Linguists Classify Languages?
2: Lexicostatistics
3: Tree-Based Quantitative Approaches - Computational Cladistics
4: Tree-Based Quantitative Approaches: Sublists
5: Correlations Between Genetic and Linguistic Data
6: Climbing Down from the Trees: Network Models
7: Dating
8: Quantitative Methods Beyond the Lexicon