ИСТИНА

The article presents a comparison of different methods of glottochronology considering the Romance languages. 110 basic word lists of 54 modern Romance languages compiled adhering to the chosen methodology were used as the source data for the glottochronological analysis, as well as the Old French, Old Italian, Classical Latin and Old Latin lists. Swadesh’s formula, Starostin’s modified formula and a new alternative method based on a statistical approach towards the lexical replacement process were used for dating the divergence between groups and individual languages. Comparing the resulted data allowed the authors to draw some conclusions about the correspondence between the models and the changes in the basic vocabulary, as well as reveal limitations of the glottochronological method when used for dating linguistic changes in a single language family.