I am designedly using the term ‘genetic’ rather than ‘historical’ in this context because, after having been for thirty years a devotee of the discipline conventionally labeled ‘historical linguistics’, I have at present grave misgivings about the unqualified suitability of the label and, far more important, I have become alert to the implications of its possible inappropriateness.

To begin with, the label ‘history’, like many terms of ancient scholarship, is fraught with imprecision. It refers to an analytical discipline concerned with the study of the past, but also with a segment of that past regardless of any analysis, as long as there exist any written records. Only thus can we explain the fact that prehistory designates, at least in normal usage, another, earlier segment along the time axis, whereas such terms as prelinguistics (which mayor may not have been coined) and prephilology (which has actually been toyed with on one occasion) could meaningfully refer only to a prescientific stage of a discipline; that is to say, to cognition itself, not to an object of cognition.