Word families, allofams, and the comparative method

Abstract

Linguists researching the Trans-Himalayan family do not have a self-perception as working outside the mainstream of historical linguistics, but ‘word families’ and ‘allofams’ are important elements in their thinking despite the absence of these terms in the wider discipline. A close examination of the practice of historical linguistics in Indo-European and Trans-Himalayan leads to the conclusion that those phenomena treated as word families admit superior analyses in more traditional terms.