Abstract:SummaryAugust Schleicher’s genealogical tree (Stammbaum) and Johannes Schmidt’s wave metaphor (Welle) are very well known linguistic concepts. At the same time there has been a widespread misunderstanding about their original meaning and the questions they were intended to deal with. Both were originally classificatory concepts, not models of language change. Schleicher, on the one hand, introduced theStammbaumby transforming hierarchical classes of Indo-European languages into successive historical stages. Sc… Show more
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