Michael Cysouw, Allgemeine Sprachwissenschaft, LMU, Munich

Exemplar-based language change

Reconstruction of proto-languages has traditionally been based on the
investigation of changes in the phoneme system. Although this is a perfectly
viable method, it is rather limited in its application. I will propose some ideas
for the further development of historical interpretation of linguistic variation
based on the quantitative distributions of exemplars, either sounds or meanings.