Textual Criticism and Cladistic techniques

[Guest guest]

Dear list members,

 

I just came across an internet article

REPORT ON THE TEXTUAL CRITICISM CHALLENGE 1991 at

http://rjohara.uncg.edu/darwinbmcr.html .

 

According to this article a challenge was posted to recreate by statistical

or numerical means alone the table of relationships for some 44 manuscripts

of an old Norse narrative established by the basis of external evidence and

traditional stemmatic methods. The only information given out was a list

giving for each variation a number to identify the variation and a number to

identify which manuscript it occured in. I.e 6 1 2 7 means variation 6

occurs in manuscripts 1,2 and 7 etc.

 

The article says that an evolutionary biologist at the University of

Wisconsin Robert J. O'Hara using the technique of cladistic analysis,

specifically the computer program PAUP (Phylogenetic Analysis Using

Parsimony, Swofford 1991) was able to:

 

1) place adjacent to one another 16 manuscripts know from external evidence

to be directly related to eachother.

2) successfully define the 7 manuscript groups deduced by the textual

critic.

3) successfully define two of these groups as subgroups of another larger

group.

4)suggest, accurately, that the two largest groups were each descendants of

single manuscripts.

5) provid lists of just what variants were introduced at what point in the

tradition, that agreed reasonably closely with the editors own lists of the

variants.

 

This all took place 10 years ago. Have these techniques of cladistic

analysis by computer proven useful in textual criticism. Have they ever

been applied successfully or not to Indian manuscripts.

 

 

Harry Spier

371 Brickman Rd.

Hurleyville, New York

USA 12747

 

 

_______________

Send and receive Hotmail on your mobile device: http://mobile.msn.com