North Caucasian languages: comparison of three classification approaches

Abstract

In the paper three approaches to reconstruction of languages evolution trees are compared on the material of North Caucasian languages: the expert one (comparative-historical method), lexicostatistics, application of phylogenetic algorithms to databases. It is shown that degree of coherence of different computer solutions is approximately the same as degree of coherence of expert solutions. A new classification of North Caucasian languages is proposed, as a result of applying the consensus method to different known classifications.