Howare relationships established among theworld’s languages? This is one of the most topical and most controversial questions in contemporary linguistics. The central aims of the book are to answer this question, to cut through thecontroversies, and to contribute to research in distant genetic relationships. Indoing this the authors show how the methods have been employed, revealingwhich methods, techniques, and strategies have proven successful and which ones have proven ineffective. The book seeks to determine how particular language families were established and offers an evaluation of several of the most prominent and more controversial proposals of distant genetic relationship (such as Amerind, Nostratic, Eurasiatic, Proto-World, and others). Finally, the authors make recommendations for practice in future research. This book will contribute significantly to understanding language classification in general.