Le comparatisme : de la généalogie à la génétique.

Abstract

The comparatist framework which have undergone a remarkable development in the 19th century and have declined in the 20th century, has recently made a noticeable come back on the international scientific scene. The mixing of the comparatist and reconstructivist perspective with population genetics lead to the so called "new synthesis". The same uncontrolled metaphors and the same genealogical conceptions are set to work in this new framework. We first introduce a critical analysis of classical comparatism stressing how and why the genealogical notion of Stammbaum was deconstructed. We then show how modern genetic comparatism rests on the very same ideas without having answered the critics addressed to the classical one. Finally, we show that within a neo Darwinian paradigm many fruitful alternatives to the genetic-genealogical framework exists which allows for new ways of questioning diachronic relations among languages