classification of Romance languagesA family tree classification is commonly used for the Romance languages. If, however, historical treatment of one phonetic feature is taken as a classificatory criterion for construction of a tree, results differ. Classified according to the historical development of stressed vowels, French would be grouped with North Italian and Dalmatian but not with Occitan, while Central Italian would be...
development by Schleicher...Developing a system of language classification resembling a botanical taxonomy, he traced groups of related languages and arranged them into a genealogical tree. His model came to be known as the Stammbaumtheorie, or family-tree theory, and was a major development in the history of Indo-European studies or, more generally, in historical linguistic theory.
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