Challenges of sampling and how phylogenetic comparative methods help: With a case study of the Pama-Nyungan laminal contrast. (arXiv:2201.00195v1 [q-bio.PE])

Phylogenetic comparative methods are new in our field and are shrouded, for
most linguists, in at least a little mystery. Yet the path that led to their
discovery in comparative biology is so similar to the methodological history of
balanced sampling, that it is only an accident of history that they were not
discovered by a typologist. Here we clarify the essential logic behind
phylogenetic comparative methods and their fundamental relatedness to a deep
intellectual tradition focussed on sampling. Then …

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