Linguistic reconstruction
processes of understanding how earlier languages were spoken
Linguistic reconstruction is the practice of establishing the features of an unattested ancestor language of one or more given languages.
Quotes
edit- We must not make the mistake of confusing our methods, and the results flowing from them, with the facts; we must not delude ourselves into believing that our retrogressive method of reconstruction matches, step by step, the real progression of linguistic history.
- E. Pulgram, "Proto-Indo-European Reality and Reconstruction", Language, 35 (1959), pp. 421-6. Quoted in E. F. Bryant, The Quest for the Origins of Vedic Culture (Oxford UP, 2001), ch. 4
- No reputable linguist pretends that Proto-Indo-European reconstructions represent a reality, and the unpronounceability of the asterisked formulae is not a legitimate argument against reconstruction.
- Ernst Pulgram, quoted by Jean-Paul Demoule, The Indo-Europeans: Archaeology, Language, Race, and the Search for the Origins of the West (2023)
