typology historical change typology historical change note try explicit grant discuss occasion perhap need explicit statement one most fruitful avenue research distant language comparison believe growth field call typology historical change under rubric include example work johanna nichol whether agree datum finding particulars method relevant point still help our along include challenge want issue mode discourse mr vovin ask recently help typological parallel hypothesis interest phrase mean water fall fossilize basic word rain response query back positive answer example claim fit description method reason need accumulation attest example particular change educate our intuition naively possible semantic shift ever experience actual semantic shift suspect help us improve our method guestimate possible language relationship least hypothesize semantic shift frequently attest strain compare lexical item whose meaning differ wherea contrast another hypothesize semantic shift firmly attest unattest semantic shift probably those distant language comparison themselve most difficult over large span number contextsensitive condition environment great number lexical item available compare thus few recur sound correspondence word move toward deeper comparison must rely measure distance semantic shift distance phonological change rather measure repeat sound correspondence semantic identity yet our tool sharpen proceed gradually sharpen study attest case best start word someone really want our method fare gradually distant language comparison method fare tabulate language relationship proportion soundcorrespondence repetition comparable vocabulary comparable means itself variable exclusively define b c b semantic distance along attest path semantic change lexical item compare where multiple shift attest estimate distance count closer smaller where few shift attest estimate distance count greater course enough information database form present whatever provisionally explain d c phonetic distance along attest path phonetic change lexical item compare relatively knowledge available phonological change d explore three measure above vary greater depths first assure case less assure one weight average closeness compare lexical item vary increase depths proportion regular often recur sound correspondence unique rarely recur sound correspondence vary increase depths development tool b c most advance our ability compare greater depths improve our method grateful anyone point study approximate part program outline above comparative method currently benefit fully develop tool kind degree current comparative method consider less rigorous ought reason powerful distant language comparison sometime future comparative method tool precisely real challenge today exist comparativist avoid artificially fossilize term comparative method avoid treat method fix subject improvement supplement newer powerful method method science healthy word drop term mass plural term comparative method imply lessen rigor indeed pain point above firmly believe limitation present state comparative method result lack rigor area typology possible change phonetic semantic grammatical work discuss bill croft topic syntactic reconstruction typology certainly relevant concern raise here beginning paradigm focus path change language comparativehistorical linguist leave behind add technique box tool while keep technique already lloyd anderson 