Genealogy of the Main Indo-European Branches Applying the Separation Base Method^*

Abstract

In earlier quantitative analyses of genetic relations between languages, the stochastic bias caused by replacements was not properly eliminated, which could only lead to wrong results. Only now, owing to N. Bird’s (1982) count of the huge database of the “Indogermanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch” (J. Pokorny, 1959), was it possible, in spite of its known shortcomings, to compute the number of lexemes at the era of separation for any pair of languages, by means of a robust estimator. The results allow us to infer a sequence of separation. The customary black and white hypotheses, e.g., pro or contra an Italo-Celtic relationship, cannot do justice to the real developments and must give way to this more differentiated overall view.