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.
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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.
- Pulgram, E. 1959. "Proto-Indo-European Reality and Reconstruction." Language 35:421-426. Quoted in Bryant, E. F. (2001). The Quest for the Origins of Vedic Culture : the Indo-Aryan migration debate. Oxford University Press. 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)
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edit- Hermann goes even further: complete forms cannot be reconstructed at all, only single sounds, and even these are meant as approximations only, not as phonetically completely correct reconstructions.
- Szemerényi O. 1996 Introduction to Indo-European Linguistics (translated from German 1990, with additional notes and references) Oxford, OUP. [1] page 33.
