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On Realism in Reconstruction

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 April 2026

Robert A. Hall Jr.
Robert A. Hall Jr.*
Affiliation:
Cornell University
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Extract

In his article Proto-Indo-European Reality and Reconstruction, Ernst Pulgram states that ‘when we reconstruct, through the methods of comparative historical linguistics, an array of asterisked Proto-Indo-European forms, the procedure itself implies that the result of our endeavours is a uniform construct’, and asserts that ‘anything in linguistics that is timeless, non-dialectal, and non-phonetic, by definition does not represent a real language’ (422). He then bases his further discussion of the impossibility of learning about ‘Real Proto-Indo-European’ on the presumed unreal nature of the reconstructed proto-language: ‘No reputable linguist pretends that Proto-Indo-European reconstructions represent a reality’ (423). Hence, for Pulgram, the formulaic character of our reconstructions of individual items renders it impossible to make a serious attempt to reconstruct texts in a proto-language: ‘To write an Aesopian fable or the Lord's Prayer in reconstructed Proto-Indo-European is innocent enough as a pastime, but the text has no doubt little if any resemblance to any speech ever heard on earth’ (423).

Information

Type
Research Article
Information
Language , Volume 36 , Issue 2-Part1: April-June , June 1960 , pp. 203 - 206
Copyright
Copyright © 1960 Linguistic Society of America

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References

1 Lg. 35.421–6 (1959).

2 Cf. my review of Pulgram's The tongues of Italy, in Romanic review 50.237–8 (1959).

3 Cf. C. D. Buck, Comparative grammar of Greek and Latin 4 §§229, 230.7 (Chicago, 1948), and similar standard reference works.

4 Cf. C. Tagliavini, Le origini delle lingue neolatine 3 211–2 (Bologna, 1959); P. Aebischer, Cultura neolatina 8.181–204 (1948).

5 Cf. R. A. Hall Jr., Idiolect and linguistic super-ego, Studia linguistica 5.21–7 (1951).

6 Pulgram discusses this in his fn. 8 as something of which ‘it would be interesting to undertake a reconstruction’. But this has already been done, whether under this label or not, by a multitude of scholars since the times of Gröber and Meyer-Lübke.

7 The reconstruction of Proto-Romance, Lg. 26.6–27 (1950).

8 Lg. 26.16–7 (1950).

9 This text was prepared in the final three weeks of a seminar in comparative Romance linguistics held at Cornell University in 1958–59; for their assistance and cooperation, I am indebted to the members of that seminar, Floyd M. Cammack, Yves Courteville, Robert J. Di Pietro, and David M. Feldman.

In the text, certain conventions are observed: it is given in an essentially morphophonemic transcription, without indicating the assimilations, elisions, and loss of unstressed intertonic syllables which would probably have taken place in normal rapid speech; for the ‘proto-definite article’, ill- before the noun has been chosen arbitrarily; etc. The symbol /x/ stands for doubling of the following initial consonant, a morphophonemic feature which must be ascribed to Proto-Romance.

10 As pointed out in Lg. 26.7 fn. 8 (1950).

11 Reconstructed by W. P. Lehmann, Lg. 34.188 (1958), perhaps too apologetically. Schleicher's attempt at retelling a fable in PIE has met with undeserved contempt from later generations, apparently because of the basically irrelevant fact that our view of IE phonology was extensively revised only a short time afterwards. It would have been wiser to revise the reconstructed text along with the phonology and morphology.