Source : WordNet®

stemmatics
     n : the humanistic discipline that attempts to reconstruct the
         transmission of a text (especially a text in manuscript
         form) on the basis of relations between the various
         surviving manuscripts (sometimes using cladisitc
         analysis); "stemmatology also plays an important role in
         musicology"; "transcription errors are of decisive
         importance in stemmatics" [syn: {stemmatology}]