ABSTRACT

Conceptual model developed by Schleicher (1861-2) to describe the origin of individual languages which were believed to have ‘branched off from older languages. Influenced by Darwin’s theory of evolution, Schleicher reconstructed the origin of the individual Indo-European languages from a hypothetical Indo-European ‘proto-language’ in the form of a genetic tree whose branches are meant to correspond to the differentiation of

Apart from its adoption of biological terminology (‘genetic,’ ‘descendant’) to describe the relationship between languages, which leads to faulty associations, the genetic tree model with its (abrupt) branching cannot depict possible mutual influences or parallel linguistic developments. The principal competing model is the wave theory.