Sebastiano Timpanaro［Edited and Translated by Glenn W. Most ］
（2005年刊行， The University of Chicago Press, Chicago, viii+252 pp.，ISBN:0226804054 [hbk] / ISBN:0226804062 [pbk] → 版元ページ｜Google Book Search）
原著はイタリア語．ドイツ語訳は大学院生の頃に読んだが，この英訳版は資料性がずっと高い．翻訳者による原書各版の異同，写本伝承過程における manuscript stemma の構造のモデル化に関する著者の遺稿（Paul Maas の Textkritik を踏まえて）などの付録が付けられている．ステマの構造の形式化は pattern cladistics のそれと瓜二つ．考えることは学問分野を越えて修練していたということ．もちろん，pattern cladistics よりも Maasian stemmatics の方が半世紀ほど古いんだけれども．
比較文献学と歴史言語学における「系統推定法」のパラレルな関係について，著者はこう述べている：
There is an indeniable affinity between the method with which the Classical philologist classifies manuscripts genealogically and reconstructs the reading of the archetype, and the method with which the linguist classifies languages and as far as possible reconstructs a lost mothe language, for example, Indo-European. In both cases inherited elements must be distinguished from innovations, and the unitary anterior phase from which these have branched out must be hypothesized on the basis of various innovations. The fact that innovations are shared by certain manuscripts of the same text, or be certain languages of the same family, demonstrates that these are connected by a particularly close kinship, that they belongs to a subgroup: a textual corruption too is an innovation compared to the previously transmitted text, juxt like a linguistic innovation. On the other hand, shared “conservations” have no classificatory value: what was already found in the original text or language can be preserved even in descendents that are quite different from one another. (Chapter 8, p. 119)
すなわち，写本系譜であろうと言語系統であろうと，共有された新生形質（shared innovations）は近縁関係の証拠となるが，共有された保存形質（shared conservations）にその証拠性はない．分岐学における共有派生形質（synapomorphy）と共有原始形質（symplesiomorphy）の区別が Hennig 以前の文献学や言語学でなされていたということ．
