The chapter provides a general introduction to the book, presenting the background and the overall framework. It assesses the relationship between traditional linguistic phylogenetics and more recent computational approaches. After discussing the terminology relevant for linguistic phylogenetic studies it provides an overview of the various chapters of the book, highlighting some of the most important problems discussed by the authors. It then discusses some of the specific results of the individual chapters and the broader perspectives they offer on the phylogenetics of the Indo-European language family.

The chapter presents an overview of approaches to linguistic chronology and subgrouping on a computational basis, along with their roots and a critical discussion, highlighting advantages and drawbacks of the individual methods. The specific results of computational approaches to linguistic chronology and subgrouping are evaluated in the light of current linguistic knowledge. Special focus is given to the potential of applying the computational replication of changes to linguistic subgrouping and chronology. With the use of such method the relative chronology of changes can be established and the exact same set of changes in two languages can be a trace of common development and a subgroup. This is shown on material drawn from different subgroups which are thought to be closely related within Indo-European starting from the most obvious ones (Indo-Iranian) to the ones that are less obvious (Balto-Slavic) and even controversial (Italo-Celtic, Graeco-Armenian). Further potential and problems in the computational replication of changes are discussed at length.