The extent to which traits and phylogenies are correlated is an open research question, see this wikipedia article. But aspects of biology that are unique to phylogenies such as diversification interact with traits in complex ways. The SSE models are a good introduction to the methodology of this (background here).
I don’t know how to attach these ideas to linguistics because I can’t think of a good concrete example.
Ah, I understand now.
Then I would say the similar claim in historical linguistics would be that languages which are more closely related genealogically would be more mutually intelligible.
For example, as a french speaker I can partially understand Italian much more than I can understand German (speaking neither).
The claim is weaker/broken in cases where one of the two languages has extensive borrowing from another unrelated language (for Romance, Spanish is an example because of its many borrowings from Arabic)
As for textual criticism, the analogy would be that the closest manuscripts are related, the more they “feel the same”. But honestly this would be much more subtle, given that different manuscripts are much closer than different species or languages.
Ah, I understand now.
Then I would say the similar claim in historical linguistics would be that languages which are more closely related genealogically would be more mutually intelligible.
For example, as a french speaker I can partially understand Italian much more than I can understand German (speaking neither).
The claim is weaker/broken in cases where one of the two languages has extensive borrowing from another unrelated language (for Romance, Spanish is an example because of its many borrowings from Arabic)
As for textual criticism, the analogy would be that the closest manuscripts are related, the more they “feel the same”. But honestly this would be much more subtle, given that different manuscripts are much closer than different species or languages.