Linguistics and cladistics

[Thomas Lammers]

At 03:40 PM 10/20/00 -0500, you wrote:

>In sum, linguists have been operating with an intuitively based cladistic
>system for decades, albeit without a hard statistical basis. The differences
>seem to be based on the more disorderly nature of linguistic data,
>especially compared to molecular data; and to the much larger number of
>species than languages. I don't think that taxonomy should emulate
>linguistics, rather the reverse; but the parallels are intriguing -- at
>least to one with a background in linguistics!


Hasn't an essentially cladistic methodology been used in textual analysis
of literature as well?




Thomas G. Lammers, Ph.D.

Assistant Professor and Curator of the Herbarium (OSH)
Department of Biology and Microbiology
University of Wisconsin Oshkosh
Oshkosh, Wisconsin 54901-8640 USA

e-mail:       lammers at uwosh.edu
phone:      920-424-7085
fax:           920-424-1101

Plant systematics; classification, nomenclature, evolution, and
biogeography of the Campanulaceae s. lat.
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