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future, there is a direct intuition that future-tense sen- Devitt M & Sterelny K (1999). Language and reality: an
tences are not now either true or false. Antirealists may introduction to the philosophy of language. Oxford: Basil
deem some class of sentences to be nondescriptive, or Blackwell.
descriptive but not involving a realist notion of truth. Dummett M (1973). Frege: philosophy of language.
London: Duckworth.
Among those who accept realist truth, there are those
Dummett M (1978). ‘Realism.’ In Truth and other enigmas.
who analyze truth in terms of the existence of objects
London: Duckworth. 145–165.
and universals, and others who take an antirealist Dummett M (1991). The logical basis of metaphysics.
attitude toward either objects or universals. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Dummett M (1992). ‘The metaphysics of verificationism.’
See also: Descriptions, Definite and Indefinite: Philosophi-
In Hahn L E (ed.) The philosophy of A. J. Ayer. La Salle,
cal Aspects; Empty Names; Nominalism; Objectivity in IL: Open Court. 129–148.
Moral Discourse; Reference: Philosophical Theories; Se- Dummett M (1993). ‘Realism and anti-realism.’ In The seas
mantic Value; Verificationism. of language. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 462–478.
Field H (1980). Science without numbers. Princeton:
Bibliography Princeton University Press.
Mackie J L (1977). Ethics: inventing right and wrong.
Aristotle (1984). ‘De interpretatione.’ In Barnes J (ed.) The Harmondsworth: Penguin.
works of Aristotle. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Quine W V O (1970). Philosophy of logic. Englewood
1, 25–27. Cliffs: Prentice Hall.
Ayer A J (1946). Language, truth and logic. London: Victor Russell B (1956). ‘On denoting.’ In Marsh R (ed.) Logic and
Gollancz. knowledge. London: George Allen and Unwin. 41–56.
Blackburn S (1993). Essays in quasi-realism. New York: Wright C (1993). Realism, meaning and truth. Oxford:
Oxford University Press. Blackwell.

Reconstruction, Cultural
J T Katz, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ, USA the reconstructed morphemes and words is an evident
ß 2006 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. desideratum. While this may sound straightforward,
interpreting the lexical evidence that emerges from
historical and comparative linguists’ occupation
One of the main tasks of historical and comparative with formal matters of phonology and morphology
linguistics is reconstruction – the recreation, to the is often not at all easy: semantic change is very much a
best of our abilities, of a linguistic situation at some matter of (human) tendencies rather than (scientific)
point in the past. Using broad knowledge of tenden- rules (see, e.g., Fortson, 2003), relying on cultural
cies in language change and employing above all the situations and norms that may be hard for outsiders
justly famous and powerful technique known as the to fathom, especially outsiders who are looking back
Comparative Method (the classic account remains on a bygone civilization. It is true that even some
Meillet, 1925), scholars are able to explain with phonological changes can seem non-evident unless
some precision the closely linked matters of linguistic taken apart and examined very closely, but in histori-
evolution and relationship, specifically how a given cal semantics, the ‘surprise factor’ is always there.
language has evolved from its linear predecessor and Without an understanding of culture-specific religious
how the language in question is related to other ton- and legal rituals, for example, it is not possible to
gues that are not part of the same line but whose own explain why there should be a morpho-phonological
histories show that they once intersected with it. relationship between the English words blood and
Most work concentrates on phonology and morphol- bless (the verb originally meant ‘consecrate with
ogy since sounds and smaller combinations of sounds blood’) or exactly how the Latin word testis (
are in a certain obvious sense the easiest units of *trit(j)o-sth2-o-, literally ‘standing as third’) could
language to deal with; the reconstruction of syntax have come to mean in the first place ‘witness’ and
is, however, playing an increasingly large role in then also ‘testicle’ (see Katz, 1998).
linguistic research. Whatever one may think of the Sapir-Whorf
But it is important not to forget semantics and hypothesis, there is clearly some sort of relationship
pragmatics: since speech exists in the first place for between worldview and linguistic expression, and the
communication, coming to terms with the meaning of goal of cultural reconstruction (sometimes known as
390 Reconstruction, Cultural

linguistic paleontology) is to use language and ety- of the widely publicized and aggressive battles betw-
mology to gain access to the way people talked about een linguists and archaeologists (Blench and Spriggs,
their environment. Forms in related languages may 1997–1999 is a very useful collection, especially in
lead scholars to reconstruct proto-words for ‘fish’ and this context volume 2 [1998], subtitled Correlating
‘loom’, but it requires more than a reckoning of archaeological and linguistic hypotheses) and now
sounds and morphemes to determine with any degree also geneticists and evolutionary biologists (see, e.g.,
of plausibility just what species of fish speakers were Gray and Atkinson, 2003, whose time-scale nearly all
referring to or exactly what kind of instrument they linguists consider impossible).
actually used for weaving. There is of course an im- Cultural reconstruction is above all part of the
portant difference between fish and looms, namely history of ideas, a way into the metaphors people
that the one is natural, the other man-made. When live and lived by: that we surf the web, for example,
scholars speak of cultural reconstruction, they fre- and that the Navajo call corn , literally
quently mean to encompass both. Perhaps largely ‘enemy-food’, because they learned of it from the
because of the inordinately great role that the evi- Pueblo and that early Indo-Europeans personified
dence of words for kinds of fish and trees – especially evening as ‘the shrouded one’ because in their mythol-
the salmon (Diebold, 1985 gives a salutary account) ogy, the sky got dressed at the end of the day (see
and the beech (see, e.g., Friedrich, 1970: 106–115) – Janda, 2000: 200–211 and Katz, 2000). Coming to
has played in scholars’ highly controversial attempts grips with the nuances of words is often essential for
to specify the homeland (‘Urheimat’) and early migra- determining the pragmatic fulcrum of semantic
tions of the Indo-Europeans (see, e.g., Mallory, 1989), change and, more generally, provides a good window
the reconstructed vocabulary of the natural world has onto a culture’s organization and values: what it does
historically figured more prominently than words for with the natural materials found in the environment;
items of material and intellectual culture. My empha- how it functions sociopolitically and economically at
sis in what follows is on the latter, as well as (in part both the micro (family) and the macro level (society
on account of my own limited competence) on Indo- as a whole); what its legal and religious systems are;
European peoples. (Most textbooks on historical and how it expresses itself artistically. (The most
and comparative linguistics rely heavily on Indo- remarkable works that cover all these topics are
European evidence, but two good ones that do not Benveniste, 1969 and the papers collected in Watkins,
and that do discuss cultural reconstruction are Crow- 1994: volume 2; see also Buck, 1949, Gamkrelidze
ley, 1997, whose examples come mostly from Austra- and Ivanov, 1984: volume 2, and Mallory and
lia and the Pacific, and Campbell, 2004, who stresses Adams, 1997 [plus Zimmer, 1999], as well as the
the languages of the Americas.) good summary accounts in Watkins, 2000: vii–xxxv
In the earliest days of scientific linguistics, the rela- and passim and Fortson, 2004: 16–47.) Let us briefly
tionship between proto-language and proto-culture consider each of these areas in turn.
was taken for granted (Jacob Grimm, for example, It is largely uncontroversial that the Proto-Indo-
was interested as much in what it meant to be German Europeans were an agricultural people who plowed
as in what it meant to speak it), but the rise of Neo- (*h2erh3-: Latin arāre, whence English arable) their
grammarianism in the late 19th century led to a heavy fields (*h2eĝ-ro-: Latin ager, as well as English acre; a
emphasis – still not overcome – on formal methodol- derivative of the root *h2eĝ- ‘drive’), cultivated grains
ogy and the view that the concomitant investigation (probably at least wheat or barley, though precise
of cultural questions (the so-called ‘Wörter und linguistic reconstructions are difficult), bred cattle
Sachen’-approach, championed most of all at that (*gwow-: Latin bōs and English cow) and other live-
time by Otto Schrader: see especially Schrader, 1907 stock (*pek̂u-: Latin pecū and, interestingly, English
and 1917–1929) was at best the poor stepsister. (It is fee [< Old English feoh, in effect ‘valuable four-
telling that there is no chapter on cultural reconstruc- legged property’]), made ample use of dairy products
tion in the latest compendium of research on historical (a variety of words can be reconstructed more or less
linguistics, Joseph and Janda, 2003.) The situation is precisely, including the predecessor(s) of Latin lac and
slowly changing, though the adherence of certain English milk), and spun (*(s)neh1-: Latin nēre; cf. also
scholars to repugnant ideological (racist or national- English needle) wool (*h2/3wlh1-neh2-). Questions
istic) interpretations of linguistic data has not helped about the use of native animals,˚ vegetables, and min-
raise the status of reconstructive work in academia erals that generate somewhat more excitement con-
(see, e.g., Lincoln, 1999). As for the relative status cern two related matters: the domestication of the
of linguistic techniques vis-à-vis others in the horse and the invention of the wheel and evolution
reconstruction of prehistory (Day, 2001 provides a of the chariot. The distribution of the preform
fine synthesis), it remains to be seen what will come *kwe-kwl(h1)-o-across the Indo-European languages
Reconstruction, Cultural 391

(e.g., English wheel and Tocharian B kokale ‘chari- Because legal and religious texts tend cross-cultur-
ot’), coupled with some archaic features that appear ally to be repositories of linguistic archaism, it is a
to be part of the paradigm’s accentual pattern, makes priori likely that investigating the language of a num-
it virtually certain on linguistic grounds that the ber of such documents will tell us a great deal about
Proto-Indo-Europeans had at least this one word for the proto-culture in question. The vocabulary of
‘wheel’, a derivative of the root *kwel(h1)- ‘turn’ Indo-European law (‘that which is laid down’
(a second widespread word is based on the root < *legh- ‘lie, lay’, a root that some believe also lies
*ret-‘run’). This is interesting for a number of rea- behind Latin lēx) has not yet received as much atten-
sons, not least because the description of the Proto- tion as it deserves, but it seems likely that the princi-
Indo-Europeans’ world sketched in the first sentence pal words for ‘law’ were *jows (cf. Lat. iūs and the
of this paragraph suggests a late Neolithic society of compound iū-dex ‘judge’, literally ‘law-pronouncer’)
the 4th millennium B.C., which is precisely when we and one or more derivatives of the root *dheh1- ‘put’,
find the first archaeological evidence for wheels (ca. as in Classical Greek thémis, Vedic Sanskrit dhā´ma-,
3300 B.C.), an invention that would, not very surpris- and English deed and doom (which originally meant
ingly, have been referred to in the first instance with a ‘judgment’, witness doomsday). It is noteworthy (see
wholly transparent neologism (see Fortson, 2004: Watkins, 1995: 434, with n. 5) that the very first
38). The place and date of the domestication attested Indo-European word that has come down
(*demh2-: Latin domāre and English tame) of the to us is a 19th-century B.C. borrowing into Old
horse (*h1ek̂wo-: Latin equus, whence English Assyrian of (pre-)Hittite išhiul ‘contract’ (a derivative
equine) is more controversial still, and it must suffice ˘
of the verb for ‘bind’). Recent work on Greek and
here to state that there is possible evidence for tamed Indic marriage by Stephanie W Jamison (see, e.g.,
horses in Eurasia around 3500 B.C. Jamison, 1999) has added considerably to our under-
Indo-European society was certainly patriarchal standing of Indo-European legal rights and responsi-
and patrilineal (its kinship system is generally thought bilities, including – remarkably – those of women. As
to have originally been more or less of the Omaha for religion (Latin religiō is probably etymologically
type, but see Hettrich, 1985 for an interesting dis- ‘that which binds (-lig-)’, a derivative of *leiĝ-), the
sent); accordingly, we know more about men’s Proto-Indo-Europeans were polytheistic, with the
exploits than women’s, though E J W Barber (see, head, or ‘father’ (*ph2ter-), of the gods – addressed
e.g., Barber, 1991) has deftly reconstructed the lin- in the vocative as Vedic Sanskrit dyàus. pı́tar, Greek
guistic and material world of ‘women’s work’, the Zeû páter, and Latin Iū-piter (i.e., Jupiter) – the deifi-
production of textiles. The self-designation of the cation of the bright sky, *djew-. It is worth noting
Proto-Indo-Europeans is unfortunately not wholly that the Latin word deus (as in ‘dei-fication’) is a
clear and neither are the oldest words for ‘clan’, derivative of this same root, whereas Greek theós (as
though it is good to remember that civilizations in ‘poly-the-istic’), like also Latin fēstus (whence our
the world over frequently call themselves simply word festival), goes back to *dheh1s-, which may well
‘The People’ (e.g., Navajo Diné), which is roughly be an extension of the root for ‘put’ noted above.
the meaning of the reasonably widespread preform The English word god, incidentally, probably derives
*teuteh2- of, for example, Dutch and Deutsch (the from *ĝ hew- ‘pour’ and refers to the spirit immanent
German word for ‘German’). The leader of the tribe in a tumulus, perhaps a kurgan, the Eurasian burial
was the *h3rēĝ- ‘king’ (built to the root *h3reĝ- mound that some archeologists, notably Marija
‘straighten; rule’), a word preserved in Latin rēx and Gimbutas, associate with the Proto-Indo-Europeans
found in such Germanic names as Richard (< Old (see Watkins, 2000: 31, resuming an argument made
High German Rı̄co-hard ‘strong in rule’), not to men- in 1974; Kupfer, 2004 presents a different and to my
tion Theodoric and Dietrich, which, indeed, both go mind less convincing picture of the details). Our
back precisely to a compound of *teuteh2- plus knowledge of Proto-Indo-European religious culture
*h3rēĝ-, ‘people’s king’. An issue that has exercised has recently been greatly expanded in two surpassing-
scholars for the past couple of generations is the ly brilliant books by Michael Janda (Janda, 2000,
utility of Georges Dumézil’s ‘trifunctionalism’ as a 2005).
model of Proto-Indo-European society. According to Finally, there is verbal art, a cover term that sub-
Dumézil (see, e.g., Dumézil, 1958), free males sumes a range of genres in which stunning archaisms
belonged to one of three classes: kings and priests and delightful new turns of phrase are woven together
(first function), warriors (second), and farmers and in a special way. In Proto-Indo-European society, the
other commoners (third). The linguistic and philolog- poet (for whom there is no single reconstructible
ical evidence for this – and for its wider application to designation) was one of the most highly regarded
divinities – remains disputed. figures, and thanks to two profoundly influential
392 Reconstruction, Cultural

works, Schmitt, 1967 and Watkins, 1995, and the Dumézil G (1958). L’Idéologie tripartie des indo-européens.
further research they have inspired (e.g., Matasović, Brussels: Latomus.
1996), the nuances of what is usually called ‘Dichter- Fortson B W IV (2003). ‘An approach to semantic change.’
sprache’ are becoming ever more apparent. It is clear In Joseph & Janda (eds.). 648–666.
Fortson B W IV (2004). Indo-European language and cul-
that at least some metrical and strophic forms found
ture: an introduction. Malden, MA: Blackwell.
in the individual daughter languages go back to Proto- Friedrich P (1970). Proto-Indo-European trees: the arboreal
Indo-European times and that certain artful tech- system of a prehistoric people. Chicago: University of
niques were part of the repertoire of bards who told Chicago Press.
tales, which then became the myths of the separate Gamkrelidze T V & Ivanov V V (1984). Indoevropejskij
Indo-European peoples (see, e.g., Puhvel, 1987) – of jazyk i indoevropejtsy: rekonstruktsija i istoriko-tipologi-
the beginning of the world and of glory in battle and cheskij analiz prajayzka i protokul’tury (2 vols). Tbilisi:
of fights against monsters. For comments on the ad- Izdatel’stvo Tbilisskogo Universiteta. [English translation:
vances in and pitfalls of attempting to reconstruct the Indo-European and the Indo-Europeans: a reconstruction
details of the genre of epic in Proto-Indo-European, and historical analysis of a proto-language and a proto-
see Katz, 2005; the inherited tradition of riddles is the culture. Nichols J (trans.). Berlin: de Gruyter, 1995.]
Gray R D & Atkinson Q D (2003). ‘Language-tree
subject of Katz, forthcoming.
divergence times support the Anatolian theory of Indo-
Cultural reconstruction in effect puts history back European origin.’ Nature 426(6965), 435–439.
into historical linguistics, and this is a difficult busi- Hettrich H (1985). ‘Indo-European kinship terminology
ness, for it involves expanding formal linguistic meth- in linguistics and anthropology.’ Anthropological Lin-
ods into the larger and messier world of realia, of real guistics 27, 453–480.
life as it is and was once lived. Still, once we acknowl- Jamison S W (1999). ‘Penelope and the pigs: Indic perspec-
edge the simple truth that real human beings spoke tives on the Odyssey.’ Classical Antiquity 18, 227–272.
the languages that we are doing our best to recon- Janda M (2000). Eleusis: Das indogermanische Erbe der
struct, it becomes part of our job as linguists to take Mysterien. Innsbruck: Institut für Sprachwissenschaft der
account of, and reconstruct as best as we can, the Universität Innsbruck.
circumstances in which these languages were used Janda M (2005). Elysion: Entstehung und Entwicklung der
griechischen Religion. Innsbruck: Institut für Sprachen
and under which they developed.
und Literaturen der Universität Innsbruck.
Joseph B D & Janda R D (eds.) (2003). The handbook of
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Katz J T (1998). ‘Testimonia ritus italici: male genitalia,
Barber E J W (1991). Prehistoric textiles: the development of solemn declarations, and a new Latin sound law.’
cloth in the Neolithic and Bronze Ages with special refer- Harvard Studies in Classical Philology 98, 183–217.
ence to the Aegean. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Katz J T (2000). ‘Evening dress: the metaphorical back-
Benveniste É (1969). Le Vocabulaire des institutions ground of Latin uesper and Greek hésperos.’ In Jones-
indo-européennes (2 vols). Paris: Éditions de Minuit. Bley K, Huld M E & Della Volpe A (eds.) Proceedings of
[English translation: Indo-European language and soci- the Eleventh Annual UCLA Indo-European Conference,
ety. Palmer E (trans.). Coral Gables: University of Miami Los Angeles, June 4–5, 1999. Washington, DC: Institute
Press, 1973.] for the Study of Man. 69–93.
Blench R & Spriggs M (eds.) (1997–1999). Archaeology Katz J T (2005). ‘The Indo-European context.’ In Foley
and language (4 vols). [I: Theoretical and methodological J M (ed.) A companion to ancient epic. Malden, MA:
orientations (1997); II: Correlating archaeological and Blackwell. 20–30.
linguistic hypotheses (1998); III: Artefacts, languages Katz J T (forthcoming). ‘The riddle of the sp(h)ij-: the Greek
and texts (1999); and IV: Language change and cultural Sphinx and her Indic and Indo-European background.’
transformation (1999)]. London: Routledge. In Pinault G-J & Petit D (eds.) Langue poétique indo-
Buck C D (1949). A dictionary of selected synonyms in the européenne. Louvain: Peeters.
principal Indo-European languages: a contribution to the Kupfer K (2004). ‘Zur Etymologie von nhd. ‘‘Gott’’ und
history of ideas. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. deren Implikationen für die nominalen Kategorien des
Campbell L (2004). Historical linguistics: an introduction Indogermanischen.’ In Fritz M & Wischer I (eds.) Histor-
(2nd edn.). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. isch-vergleichende Sprachwissenschaft und germanische
Crowley T (1997). An introduction to historical linguistics Sprachen: Akten der 4. Neulandtagung der Historisch-
(3rd edn.). Auckland: Oxford University Press. vergleichenden Sprachwissenschaft in Potsdam 2001.
Day J V (2001). Indo-European origins: the anthropological Innsbruck: Institut für Sprachen und Literaturen der
evidence. Washington, DC: Institute for the Study of Man. Universität Innsbruck. 119–128.
Diebold A R Jr (1985). The evolution of Indo-European Lincoln B (1999). Theorizing myth: narrative, ideology, and
nomenclature for salmonid fish: the case of ‘huchen’ scholarship. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
(Hucho spp.). Washington, DC: Institute for the Study Mallory J P (1989). In search of the Indo-Europeans: lan-
of Man. guage, archaeology and myth. London: Thames & Hudson.
Reconstruction, Morphological 393

Mallory J P & Adams D Q (eds.) (1997). Encyclopedia of Schrader O (1917–1929). Reallexikon der indogerma-
Indo-European culture. London: Fitzroy Dearborn. nischen Altertumskunde: Grundzüge einer Kultur-und
Matasović R (1996). A theory of textual reconstruction in Völkergeschichte Alteuropas (2 vols). (2nd edn., ed. by
Indo-European linguistics. Frankfurt am Main: Lang. Nehring A.) Berlin: de Gruyter. [First edition: 1901.]
Meillet A (1925). La Méthode comparative en linguis- Watkins C (1994). Selected writings (2 vols). Oliver L (ed.).
tique historique. Oslo: Aschehoug. [English translation: Innsbruck: Institut für Sprachwissenschaft der Universität
The comparative method in historical linguistics. Innsbruck.
Ford G B Jr (trans.). Paris: Champion, 1967.] Watkins C (1995). How to kill a dragon: aspects of Indo-
Puhvel J (1987). Comparative mythology. Baltimore: Johns European poetics. New York: Oxford University Press.
Hopkins University Press. Watkins C (2000). The American Heritage dictionary
Schmitt R (1967). Dichtung und Dichtersprache in indo- of Indo-European roots (2nd edn.). Boston: Houghton
germanischer Zeit. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz. Mifflin.
Schrader O (1907). Sprachvergleichung und Urgeschichte: Zimmer S (1999). ‘Comments on a great book.’ Journal of
Linguistisch-historische Beiträge zur Erforschung des Indo-European Studies 27, 105–163. [Review of Mallory
indogermanischen Altertums (3rd edn., 2 vols). Jena: & Adams (eds.).]
Costenoble. [First edition: 1883.]

Reconstruction, Morphological
B Fortson, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI, USA inflection. Examples of changes that are often called
ß 2006 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. morphological changes but whose effects are typical-
ly lexical in scope include analogy, paradigm leveling
and split, folk etymology, false segmentation (of the
Introduction type [a] nadder > [an] adder), double-marking, back-
The reconstruction of the morphology of a proto- formation, contamination, and taboo deformation.
language is beset with certain difficulties that do not As lexical changes, they are by definition unpredict-
attend the reconstruction of phonology. Peeling back able and irregular, and their effects can greatly ob-
the layers of historical change and undoing them – the scure morphological history (as well as phonological
essence of reconstruction – is in principle easy when history).
the changes are regular and exceptionless, as is the When the effects of these changes cause a learner
case with sound change (at least under the Neogram- to reanalyze part of the data as reflecting a morpheme
marian model). Morphological change, as is well or rule that was not present in the source grammar,
known, is quite a different kettle of fish; however, then the learner’s morphology will come to be dif-
the usual characterization of it as entirely irregular ferent from the morphology of the source grammar
is perhaps too strong, and depends on where one and true morphological change will have occurred.
seeks to localize a given change and how one defines A true morphological change, involving (for example)
‘morphological change’ in the first place. a new morphological rule, is in fact ‘regular’ in that it
Certain changes called morphological change are in affects in the same way all the members of whatever
fact lexical changes, that is, they result in a change to class or category it applies to. (The class may be small
individual items in the lexicon and do not affect the and limited in number, or it may be open, as is the
morphological system of the language. (Even a lexical case with the nouns to which the s-plural rule applies
change that removes from the language the last in English.)
remaining example of a once-productive morphologi- Once a new productive rule enters the language, it
cal process has merely erased all evidence that such a will usually erase traces of earlier rules that applied
process once existed; since the process was no longer to the same forms. But it is to be expected that the
productive anyway, the morphological system was morphology of the most frequent lexemes in a lan-
unaffected by the word’s disappearance. An example guage will have the least opportunity of being over-
of such a case is the dialectal English generalization looked by a learner, and that these items will stand
of was throughout the preterite paradigm of the the best chance of surviving in the face of morpholog-
verb be that removed the last example of the once- ical change. For this reason, irregular forms – those
common distinction between the singular and plural that are not generable by the productive morphologi-
in the preterite.) The ‘morphological system’ will cal rules of a language – are highly represented among
be, for convenience, here defined as the sum total a language’s most frequent items. These exceptions
of elements and rules needed for derivation and are therefore a valuable source of information about
Reconstruction, Morphological 393

Mallory J P & Adams D Q (eds.) (1997). Encyclopedia of Schrader O (1917–1929). Reallexikon der indogerma-
Indo-European culture. London: Fitzroy Dearborn. nischen Altertumskunde: Grundzüge einer Kultur-und
Matasović R (1996). A theory of textual reconstruction in Völkergeschichte Alteuropas (2 vols). (2nd edn., ed. by
Indo-European linguistics. Frankfurt am Main: Lang. Nehring A.) Berlin: de Gruyter. [First edition: 1901.]
Meillet A (1925). La Méthode comparative en linguis- Watkins C (1994). Selected writings (2 vols). Oliver L (ed.).
tique historique. Oslo: Aschehoug. [English translation: Innsbruck: Institut für Sprachwissenschaft der Universität
The comparative method in historical linguistics. Innsbruck.
Ford G B Jr (trans.). Paris: Champion, 1967.] Watkins C (1995). How to kill a dragon: aspects of Indo-
Puhvel J (1987). Comparative mythology. Baltimore: Johns European poetics. New York: Oxford University Press.
Hopkins University Press. Watkins C (2000). The American Heritage dictionary
Schmitt R (1967). Dichtung und Dichtersprache in indo- of Indo-European roots (2nd edn.). Boston: Houghton
germanischer Zeit. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz. Mifflin.
Schrader O (1907). Sprachvergleichung und Urgeschichte: Zimmer S (1999). ‘Comments on a great book.’ Journal of
Linguistisch-historische Beiträge zur Erforschung des Indo-European Studies 27, 105–163. [Review of Mallory
indogermanischen Altertums (3rd edn., 2 vols). Jena: & Adams (eds.).]
Costenoble. [First edition: 1883.]

Reconstruction, Morphological
B Fortson, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI, USA inflection. Examples of changes that are often called
ß 2006 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. morphological changes but whose effects are typical-
ly lexical in scope include analogy, paradigm leveling
and split, folk etymology, false segmentation (of the
Introduction type [a] nadder > [an] adder), double-marking, back-
The reconstruction of the morphology of a proto- formation, contamination, and taboo deformation.
language is beset with certain difficulties that do not As lexical changes, they are by definition unpredict-
attend the reconstruction of phonology. Peeling back able and irregular, and their effects can greatly ob-
the layers of historical change and undoing them – the scure morphological history (as well as phonological
essence of reconstruction – is in principle easy when history).
the changes are regular and exceptionless, as is the When the effects of these changes cause a learner
case with sound change (at least under the Neogram- to reanalyze part of the data as reflecting a morpheme
marian model). Morphological change, as is well or rule that was not present in the source grammar,
known, is quite a different kettle of fish; however, then the learner’s morphology will come to be dif-
the usual characterization of it as entirely irregular ferent from the morphology of the source grammar
is perhaps too strong, and depends on where one and true morphological change will have occurred.
seeks to localize a given change and how one defines A true morphological change, involving (for example)
‘morphological change’ in the first place. a new morphological rule, is in fact ‘regular’ in that it
Certain changes called morphological change are in affects in the same way all the members of whatever
fact lexical changes, that is, they result in a change to class or category it applies to. (The class may be small
individual items in the lexicon and do not affect the and limited in number, or it may be open, as is the
morphological system of the language. (Even a lexical case with the nouns to which the s-plural rule applies
change that removes from the language the last in English.)
remaining example of a once-productive morphologi- Once a new productive rule enters the language, it
cal process has merely erased all evidence that such a will usually erase traces of earlier rules that applied
process once existed; since the process was no longer to the same forms. But it is to be expected that the
productive anyway, the morphological system was morphology of the most frequent lexemes in a lan-
unaffected by the word’s disappearance. An example guage will have the least opportunity of being over-
of such a case is the dialectal English generalization looked by a learner, and that these items will stand
of was throughout the preterite paradigm of the the best chance of surviving in the face of morpholog-
verb be that removed the last example of the once- ical change. For this reason, irregular forms – those
common distinction between the singular and plural that are not generable by the productive morphologi-
in the preterite.) The ‘morphological system’ will cal rules of a language – are highly represented among
be, for convenience, here defined as the sum total a language’s most frequent items. These exceptions
of elements and rules needed for derivation and are therefore a valuable source of information about
394 Reconstruction, Morphological

earlier morphological rules in a language, and gave as in the 1st person singular perfects ēgı̄ cēpı̄ fēcı̄ stetı̄
rise to the oft-repeated maxim that morphological dedı̄ from (infin.) age-re cap-ere fac-ere stā-re da-re.
reconstruction proceeds on the basis of exceptions. Latin’s relative Oscan had this process too, as exhib-
Following this maxim does not immunize the recon- ited by hipid (historically *hēbēt), the 3rd person
structivist from pitfalls, however, and it is to these that singular perfect subjunctive of the verb corresponding
we now turn. to Latin habeō ‘have.’ A perfect *hebuı̄ or *hēbı̄, not
attested for Classical Latin, was analogically created
Reconstructing on the Basis of at some point in the pre-Romance period, because
certain forms of the Italian simple past (1st sing.
Exceptions
hebbi, 3rd sing. hebbe, 3rd pl. hebbero) continue a
Synchronic innovatory morphological processes with perfect stem with an ēˇ. If all we had at our disposal
diachronic implications include primarily analogy, an was Oscan hipid and Italian hebbi, hebbe (plus a
imprecise (and sometimes over-invoked) term that knowledge of the sound changes), we would probably
will be used here for convenience to cover any exten- be tempted to reconstruct *hēˇb- as this verb’s perfect
sion of a morphological process to a lexeme to which in the common ancestor of Italian and Oscan, namely
it previously did not apply. Forms are innovated daily Proto-Italic. (Students of these languages will know
in this way; some of them get picked up by other that the data are being fudged a bit here for illustrative
speakers, make it into the historical record, or both. purposes; the long-vowel perfects like ēgı̄ are histori-
Since analogy involves the extension of synchroni- cally quite different from the short-vowel perfects like
cally productive morphological processes, any and all stetı̄.) Conservatively, we are licensed to project only
forms produced by productive processes can be sus- the a/e pattern onto Proto-Italic, rather than (without
pected of being historically recent creations, gener- external evidence) the exhibition of that pattern by a
ated on the fly by individual speakers. (‘Productive’ is particular lexeme. And the pattern itself can only be
used here in its broadest sense, to describe any process projected onto the protolanguage if it cannot be
that can be analogically extended.) If two related lan- shown to be independently innovated in its daughters.
guages have a particular productive process in com- When cognates are compared across several lan-
mon (say, the -s plural of English and German), the guages and some of the cognates are morphologically
presence of cognate or identical forms exhibiting peculiar in their traditions and others are not, if the
that process (e.g., English pl. sofas, German Sofas) morphological peculiarities are comparable, then the
in no way guarantees that the languages’ ancestor had simplest hypothesis is that they are inherited and
those forms too (we would not want to reconstruct the other languages have regularized the peculiari-
a Common West Germanic paradigm *sofa, *sofas). ties. A well-known example of this concerns the re-
It is only when cognate forms are found exhibiting construction of the Proto–Indo–European word for
the same synchronically unproductive process that ‘daughter-in-law,’ a feminine noun that has the ex-
cognacy of both the process and the forms can be pected feminine paradigm in *-ā- in some languages
entertained. Thus, the equation of is/were with (e.g., Sanskrit snus. ā´, Old English snoru, Old Church
German ist/waren, evincing identical and unpredict- Slavonic snŭkha) but an unexpected o-stem paradigm
able suppletion, strongly suggests common inheri- in others (o-stems are usually masculine or neuter;
tance of the two paradigms. e.g., Greek nuós, Latin nurus, Armenian now [genit.
Even here, though, one can be led astray by parallel nowoy]). Since there is no reason for speakers to
independent developments. The equation of English have remodeled an inherited ā-stem feminine as an
mouse/mice with German Maus/Mäuse is good prima exceptional o-stem feminine, the o-stem forms are
facie evidence for a Common West Germanic word surely inherited, and the ā-stem forms independent
for ‘mouse’ that formed its plural by umlauting, ex- regularizations.
cept that we know on independent grounds that um- Less clear-cut, of course, are cases where determin-
laut happened well after the breakup of Common ing what is regular and what is irregular is a whole
West Germanic, and additionally spread to German task unto itself. Perfects of the Latin 3rd conjugation
only some time after it had run its course in English. were built with a multitude of different formations,
Without such knowledge, however, the comparative essentially all of which underwent some analogical
method would dictate the reconstruction of an um- spread at one time or another. The class was closed –
lauting paradigm for proto-West Germanic, since in practically no new verbs during the Classical period
both English and German, umlaut is not a regular and entered the 3rd conjugation – meaning there is little
predictable process of forming plurals. evidence for which, if any, of these formations
Similarly, one of the ways of forming a perfect in was a default for the class. Comparisons between
Latin involved changing a root vowel a or ā to ē or e, 3rd-conjugation perfects and cognate forms in other
Reconstruction, Morphological 395

Indo-European languages must therefore be made care- if the daughter languages show suppletion in that
fully, with as detailed an understanding as possible of word but with different suppletive forms, such
the histories of the different classes. as Russian let ‘years’ [genit. pl.], god [sing.] compared
The dictum to reconstruct on the basis of excep- to Polish lata [pl.], rok [sing.].)
tions also invites caution for another reason, namely How valid the results of such comparison are is a
that exceptional forms themselves are not necessarily somewhat vexed question. Under traditional under-
more archaic, and can lead the linguist astray in the standing, morphological reconstruction cannot oper-
absence of more detailed data. The history of the ate without cognate morphemes to compare; and
perfect plural stem in Sanskrit is a good case in certainly if the goal is to reconstruct the morphologi-
point. Perfects of roots of the shape CaC were formed cal inventory of a parent language, comparison of
in Sanskrit by reduplicating the root-initial conso- morphotactics alone is bootless. Additionally, since
nant; thus to par ‘fill’ was formed pa-par-, the singular inflectional morphemes are positioned by syntactic
perfect stem. The dual and plural perfect stem was rules, what is really being compared in this scenario
formed in the same way but with absence of the is the syntactic systems of two cognate languages. In
root vowel, hence pa-pr-, with an internal consonant either case, little information about the morphology
cluster. As a result of sound changes, the prehisto- of the protolanguage can be gleaned.
ric dual/plural perfect stems *sa-sd- (root sad ‘sit’), Similar situations occur outside the realm of con-
*ya-ym- (root yam ‘extend’), and *ya-yt- (root yat catenative rules, as when two cognate languages
‘stretch’) became sed-, yem-, yet-. The resulting share the same case-system but different case-endings.
pattern singular sasad-: plural sed-, yayam-: yem-, The two Tocharian languages have, between them,
yayat-: yet- was gradually extended to other roots. seven innovated nominal cases, the endings of three of
A linguist looking at this stage of Sanskrit (a bit which (comitative, allative, and ablative) are not cog-
anterior to the earliest attested stage), simply going by nate. Does one then reconstruct for Proto-Tocharian
the raw numbers where perfect plural stems of the the existence of those three desinential categories for
type papr- outnumbered those of the type sed-, might Proto-Tocharian in the absence of cognacy of the
decide that the sed- forms, being exceptional, were morphemes themselves? Clearly the answer is no,
older. In this case, though, they are the rising upstarts. since if one posits this system, the development from
A look at a later stage would reveal a different situa- it to the attested Tocharian languages would entail
tion. By the time of the Rigveda (the earliest Sanskrit the loss and replacement of all three original endings
text), ten CaC-roots that originally formed their per- (either all of them in one language, or some of them in
fects with reduplication in the plural stem have taken one language and the rest in the other). More likely,
over the sed- pattern (e.g., pec- to the root pac Proto-Tocharian had a collection of postpositions,
‘cook’), in most cases completely ousting reduplica- some of which underwent independent but parallel
tion, and an equal number preserve reduplication; by grammaticalization in its two daughters.
the later Classical stage, the number of roots preserv- Convergent evolution must not be overlooked as a
ing reduplication had been reduced to five (Whitney, source of morphological similarity. The two unrelated
1889: 284–285). The linguist looking at late prehis- Caucasian languages Georgian and Udi (the former is
toric Sanskrit would obviously need to consider other Kartvelian, the latter Lezgian [Northeast Caucasian])
factors than raw numbers in order to come to the have the same preverb–plus–verb template, in which
correct conclusion. an agreement marker intervenes between preverb
and verb, but the two systems have entirely different
sources within their respective families (Harris, 2003).
Morphotactic Comparison
From within a single family, the Slavic languages have
Cognate languages sometimes agree in having iden- a category of animacy in nominal paradigms, whereby
tical rules for the concatenation of derivational or accusatives of animate nouns have the same endings
inflectional morphemes (morphotactic rules), but as the genitive, rather then the ‘regular’ accusative
without cognacy of the actual morphemes (as in (of inanimates). Each Slavic language today has a
Siouan languages). In such instances, some linguists different system. In Russian, all noun classes partici-
have been tempted to apply the comparative method pate in it; in Novi Serbo-Croatian, only o-stems do.
to the morphological templates (the sequences of In Old Church Slavonic, which was fairly close to
fixed positions taken by the morphemes), and claim reconstructed Common Slavic, this morphosemantic
that the templates are inherited even if there has feature was extremely limited – to the accusative
been innovation in the morphemes themselves. (An singular in o-stems. The system has therefore expand-
analogy in the lexical domain would be to claim that ed in each Slavic language independently and partly
a protoparadigm was suppletive for a particular word along parallel lines; if Old Church Slavonic were
396 Reconstruction, Morphological

not attested, we would likely reconstruct too much of French). Speakers thus, clearly analyzed the feminines
it for Common Slavic (S. Thomason, personal com- as derived from the masculines and, from the pool of
munication). distinctive differences between the two, latched onto
one as the default.
Internal Morphological Reconstruction Cases like this are quite common, and they typical-
ly come about in the same way: sound changes elimi-
Based on Allomorphy
nate the final sound or syllable from one set of forms
The synchronic establishment of underlying mor- but not from another set where it was protected by
phemes on the basis of allomorphic alternations is additional derivational or inflectional material. The
essentially the same thing as the internal reconstruc- history behind the French facts is well known: what
tion of a language’s morphological history. To take synchronically appears as a derivational suffix (in this
a simple example, Latin has various present active case, /-z/, /-t/, or /-d/) is in reality the old stem-final
infinitive formations, exemplified by amāre ‘to consonant. At an earlier stage, the masculines were
love,’ movēre ‘to move,’ capere ‘to take,’ audı̄re ‘to /miz/, /Sod/, and /frit/, while the feminines were
hear,’ esse ‘to be,’ velle ‘to want,’ ferre ‘to carry.’ We /mize/, /Sode/, and /frite/; /-e/ was the feminine suf-
can isolate a suffix -re in the first four forms, but fix. In time, deletion of word-final stops produced the
the last three forms exhibit a doubling of a conso- masculines /mi/, /So/, and /fri/, and subsequently
nant followed by -e. Examination of other forms in word-final schwa deletion produced the feminines
the paradigms of these three verbs reveals the verb /miz/, /Sod/, and /frit/. For a more detailed discussion
stems to be es-, vel-, and fer-, indicating that the of the process with other examples, see the important
infinitive suffix began with a consonant that assimi- study by Hale (1973).
lated to the preceding consonant. Other evidence The synchronic French data allow one to recon-
from the language reveals that the consonant for struct the whole history except for the phonetic shape
all these forms was once s, which was rhotacized of the original feminine suffix (all that can be said for
to r between vowels (hence amāre, movēre, etc.); sure, based on the evidence presented above, is that
remained following another s (es-se); and assimilated there was one that was added to the stem-final conso-
to a preceding liquid (whence vel-le, fer-re). From this nant). A more difficult situation exists in Hawaiian,
evidence, we can reconstruct *-se as the pre-Latin where the verb form known as the passive is formed
present infinitive active suffix. (Additional evidence with the suffix [- ia] in almost all verbs, with a small
would allow us to refine the reconstruction to *-si.) handful of exceptions where the consonant is some-
Some forms of allomorphy are not so simple, and thing other than a glottal stop. Faced with these facts,
involve what has often been called a subtraction mor- a lucky soul might hit upon the idea that -ia (which is
pheme. In French, for example, there is no way to what the variant suffixes have in common) was the
predict that the feminine of /mi/ ‘sent’ (passive parti- original suffix, and the consonant preceding it was
ciple) requires the addition of /-z/ while the feminine an old stem-final consonant that had been deleted in
of /fri/ ‘fried’ requires /-t/, and the feminine of /So/ other forms where it would have been word-final;
‘cold’ requires /-d/. One can analyze this alternation but other analyses are also possible without addition-
with the following rule: derive the masculine from the al evidence (such as [- ia] is innovatory and one of
feminine by deleting the final consonant of the fe- the exceptional variants was the original suffix). The
minine. But many linguists doubt that such rules ac- truth is that [- ia] was generalized in the same way
tually exist; they have proposed an alternate rule that [-z] was generalized as a feminine marker in
for the French data, namely, posit the final consonant Northern French (only [- ia] has spread much, much
as underlyingly present in the masculine forms, and more widely than [-z].
then posit a morphophonological rule that deletes the
final consonant. This does not involve actual subtrac-
Syncretism
tion of an element from one category to form another
category, but allows both forms to be independently All reconstruction is limited by the available evi-
derived from a single underlying form. However, dence. Syncretism, the collapse of inflectional systems
under either of these scenarios, there is a serious (such as case-systems) due usually to a combination
problem: a French speaker would be unable to form of phonological and analogical factors, can obliterate
the feminine of an adjective to which he or she only evidence of original inflections. The modern Ro-
knew the masculine. Various varieties of French, in mance languages, for example, have lost all the
fact, have reanalyzed one of the possible consonants Latin case distinctions in nouns, and the few fossi-
coming at the end of feminines as a default feminine lized remnants would not suffice to recreate any full
marker (for example, [-z] in the case of Northern Latin paradigm (e.g., from French, the place-name
Reconstruction, Syntactic 397

Aix that continues the Latin locative plural Aquı̄s -v- and provide evidence for the leveling that must
‘at the waters’; the pronoun rien ‘nothing’ < Latin have taken place elsewhere.
accusative singular rem ‘thing’; encore ‘again’ dimly The above survey has touched on some of the prob-
preserving the ablative singular ending -ā in (*)hinc lems that attend morphological reconstruction. Read-
hā (h)ōrā, where the -o- continues *-au- < -ao- < *-ā ers interested in a listing of the different available
ō- [ō alone would have come out eu, as in heure < procedures should consult the carefully laid-out
hōrā]; and the noun chandeleur ‘Candlemas’ < Latin material in Koch (1996).
genitive plural *candēlōrum).
The preservation of relic forms through seman- Bibliography
tic specialization (essentially the process known as
Kuryłowicz’s Fourth Law of Analogy), leading to Fisiak J (ed.) (1980). Historical morphology. The Hague:
Mouton.
their being learned as separate lexical items not
Hale K (1973). ‘Deep-surface canonical disparities in rela-
part of the paradigms of the words that they were tion to analysis and change: an Australian example.’ In
originally inflections of, is necessary for any kind of Sebeok T A (ed.) Current trends in linguistics 11: Dia-
internal reconstruction of inflectional changes such as chronic, areal, and typological linguistics. The Hague:
gain or loss of case-endings, paradigm leveling, and Mouton. 401–458.
paradigm split. In Latin, a v (also written u) was lost Hammond M & Noonan M (eds.) (1988). Theoretical
between a consonant and u, leading to allomorphy morphology. San Diego: Academic Press.
in some nominal and adjectival paradigms; but this Harris A C (2003). ‘Preverbs and their origins in Georgian
v/u was restored, so that what should have been, e.g., and Udi.’ In Booij G & van Marle J (eds.) Yearbook of
nominative singular ecus ‘horse,’ genitive equı̄, was morphology 2003. Dordrecht: Kluwer. 61–78.
restored to equus equı̄, and what should have been Hock H H (1991). Principles of historical linguistics
(2nd edn.). Berlin: de Gruyter.
parus ‘small,’ genitive parvı̄ was restored to parvus
Joseph B D & Janda R D (2003). The handbook of historical
parvı̄. The restoration erased the effects of the sound linguistics. Oxford: Blackwell.
change, but luckily for scholars, forms like parum Koch H (1996). ‘Reconstruction in morphology.’ In Durie
‘too little,’ originally the accusative singular (from M & Ross M (eds.) The comparative method reviewed.
parvum) which was specialized as an adverb, re- Oxford: Oxford University Press. 218–263.
mained because, due to their separation from their Whitney W D (1889). Sanskrit grammar (2nd edn.).
original paradigm, they escaped the restoration of the Cambridge: Harvard University Press.

Reconstruction, Syntactic
S Thomason, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Efforts to reconstruct syntax can be traced at least
MI, USA as far back as 1893–1900, when Delbrück (as cited in
ß 2006 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. Lehmann, 1992: 32) reconstructed OV word order
for Proto-Indo-European. By far the most ambitious
early effort at reconstructing syntax is Schleicher’s
Syntactic reconstruction has not figured prominent- ‘Proto-Indo-European fable’, which was considered
ly in historical linguistic investigations, as can be sur- a rash enterprise even in those pre-Neogrammarian
mised from the fact that the index of the recent 881- times (1868; as cited and translated in Jeffers and
page Handbook of historical linguistics (Joseph and Lehiste, 1979: 107):
Janda, 2003) lists just seven pages, all in the same
article, where it is discussed. As Fox observes, Avis akvāsas ka
‘‘Syntactic reconstruction is a controversial area . . . ‘A sheep and horses’
scholars working within the framework of the classi- avis, jasmin varnā na ā ast, dadarka akvams, tam, vāg-
ham garum vaghantam, tam, bhāram magham, tam,
cal Comparative Method have been far less successful
manum āku bharantam.
in applying their methods here than in the case of avis akvabhjams ā vavakat: kard aghnutai mai vidanti
phonology or even morphology’’ (1995: 104; see also manum akvams agantam. Akvāsas ā vavakant: krudhi
Jeffers, 1976). And in discussing this topic elsewhere, avai, kard aghnutai vividvant-svas: manus patis varnām
Fox does not point to any methods other than the avisāms karnauti svabhjam gharman vastram avibhjams
Comparative Method that have offered promising ka varnā na asti.
results (1995: 104–109, 190–194, 250–253, 261–270). Tat kukruvants avis agram ā bhugat.
Reconstruction, Syntactic 397

Aix that continues the Latin locative plural Aquı̄s -v- and provide evidence for the leveling that must
‘at the waters’; the pronoun rien ‘nothing’ < Latin have taken place elsewhere.
accusative singular rem ‘thing’; encore ‘again’ dimly The above survey has touched on some of the prob-
preserving the ablative singular ending -ā in (*)hinc lems that attend morphological reconstruction. Read-
hā (h)ōrā, where the -o- continues *-au- < -ao- < *-ā ers interested in a listing of the different available
ō- [ō alone would have come out eu, as in heure < procedures should consult the carefully laid-out
hōrā]; and the noun chandeleur ‘Candlemas’ < Latin material in Koch (1996).
genitive plural *candēlōrum).
The preservation of relic forms through seman- Bibliography
tic specialization (essentially the process known as
Kuryłowicz’s Fourth Law of Analogy), leading to Fisiak J (ed.) (1980). Historical morphology. The Hague:
Mouton.
their being learned as separate lexical items not
Hale K (1973). ‘Deep-surface canonical disparities in rela-
part of the paradigms of the words that they were tion to analysis and change: an Australian example.’ In
originally inflections of, is necessary for any kind of Sebeok T A (ed.) Current trends in linguistics 11: Dia-
internal reconstruction of inflectional changes such as chronic, areal, and typological linguistics. The Hague:
gain or loss of case-endings, paradigm leveling, and Mouton. 401–458.
paradigm split. In Latin, a v (also written u) was lost Hammond M & Noonan M (eds.) (1988). Theoretical
between a consonant and u, leading to allomorphy morphology. San Diego: Academic Press.
in some nominal and adjectival paradigms; but this Harris A C (2003). ‘Preverbs and their origins in Georgian
v/u was restored, so that what should have been, e.g., and Udi.’ In Booij G & van Marle J (eds.) Yearbook of
nominative singular ecus ‘horse,’ genitive equı̄, was morphology 2003. Dordrecht: Kluwer. 61–78.
restored to equus equı̄, and what should have been Hock H H (1991). Principles of historical linguistics
(2nd edn.). Berlin: de Gruyter.
parus ‘small,’ genitive parvı̄ was restored to parvus
Joseph B D & Janda R D (2003). The handbook of historical
parvı̄. The restoration erased the effects of the sound linguistics. Oxford: Blackwell.
change, but luckily for scholars, forms like parum Koch H (1996). ‘Reconstruction in morphology.’ In Durie
‘too little,’ originally the accusative singular (from M & Ross M (eds.) The comparative method reviewed.
parvum) which was specialized as an adverb, re- Oxford: Oxford University Press. 218–263.
mained because, due to their separation from their Whitney W D (1889). Sanskrit grammar (2nd edn.).
original paradigm, they escaped the restoration of the Cambridge: Harvard University Press.

Reconstruction, Syntactic
S Thomason, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Efforts to reconstruct syntax can be traced at least
MI, USA as far back as 1893–1900, when Delbrück (as cited in
ß 2006 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. Lehmann, 1992: 32) reconstructed OV word order
for Proto-Indo-European. By far the most ambitious
early effort at reconstructing syntax is Schleicher’s
Syntactic reconstruction has not figured prominent- ‘Proto-Indo-European fable’, which was considered
ly in historical linguistic investigations, as can be sur- a rash enterprise even in those pre-Neogrammarian
mised from the fact that the index of the recent 881- times (1868; as cited and translated in Jeffers and
page Handbook of historical linguistics (Joseph and Lehiste, 1979: 107):
Janda, 2003) lists just seven pages, all in the same
article, where it is discussed. As Fox observes, Avis akvāsas ka
‘‘Syntactic reconstruction is a controversial area . . . ‘A sheep and horses’
scholars working within the framework of the classi- avis, jasmin varnā na ā ast, dadarka akvams, tam, vāg-
ham garum vaghantam, tam, bhāram magham, tam,
cal Comparative Method have been far less successful
manum āku bharantam.
in applying their methods here than in the case of avis akvabhjams ā vavakat: kard aghnutai mai vidanti
phonology or even morphology’’ (1995: 104; see also manum akvams agantam. Akvāsas ā vavakant: krudhi
Jeffers, 1976). And in discussing this topic elsewhere, avai, kard aghnutai vividvant-svas: manus patis varnām
Fox does not point to any methods other than the avisāms karnauti svabhjam gharman vastram avibhjams
Comparative Method that have offered promising ka varnā na asti.
results (1995: 104–109, 190–194, 250–253, 261–270). Tat kukruvants avis agram ā bhugat.
398 Reconstruction, Syntactic

‘A sheep on which there was no wool saw horses, one 1973, 1974, and see also 1992: 238–240); Lehmann
drawing a heavy wagon, another a great burden, and views typologically ‘inconsistent’ languages – that
another carrying a human quickly. is, languages that violate Greenberg’s ordering gener-
The sheep said to the horses: The heart feels anguish alizations – as predictably transitional, en route to
seeing the man driving the horses.
consistency. The entire typological approach to syn-
The horses said: Listen, sheep, the heart feels anguish
tactic reconstruction is sharply criticized in Watkins,
having seen the man, the master, make the wool of sheep
into warm clothes and there is no wool for the sheep. 1976, with a focus on Lehmann, 1974. Watkins
Having heard that, the sheep turned away into the field.’ laments the fact that (as he sees it) ‘‘the rebirth of
Indo-European syntax has taken place in the bed
Even aside from the fatal flaws instantly evident to of Procrustes’’ (p. 305), that ‘‘[s]yntax is now viewed
any modern Indo-Europeanist (or, for that matter, to as coterminous with word order’’ (ibid.), and that
any of the Neogrammarians of the 1870s) – most the approach ‘‘elevates some of Greenberg’s extreme-
notably the Sanskrit-like phonology, especially the ly interesting quasi-universals to the dubious status
vowel system, which no one now believes to be of an intellectual strait-jacket . . .’’ (p. 306). He also
possible for Proto-Indo-European (PIE) – Schleicher’s presents arguments against specific predictions of the
fable struck Indo-Europeanists as so unpromising typological approach, such as the fact that some ty-
that hardly anybody since then has felt confident pologically ‘inconsistent’ languages have apparently
enough to reconstruct even a short discourse for remained ‘inconsistent’ for many centuries.
Proto-Indo-European (in spite of a few proposed A partly comparable search for universal principles
‘updates’ of Schleicher’s fable, e.g., one by Hermann that might lead to valid syntactic reconstruction is
Hirt in 1938, as cited in Jeffers and Lehiste, 1979: Givón’s much-cited dictum, ‘‘Today’s morphology is
108). The problem, after the phonology is cor- yesterday’s syntax’’ (1971: 413). Like Lehmann,
rected, is that PIE syntax is too poorly understood Givón claims that clues to earlier word-order patterns
to justify constructing PIE sentences. But the issue of are to be found in relics, specifically, for Givón, in
whether syntax can be reconstructed at all recurs in the order of morphemes in words – the crucial
the literature of historical linguistics. assumption being that processes of cliticization and
Two waves of interest in the topic, one of them then affixation of formerly independent words must
widely considered abortive and the other current and have fossilized the original relative ordering of the
growing, account for most of the research. The first words. This approach too has been sharply criticized
wave, which crested in the 1970s, was based on the (see e.g., Comrie, 1980 and Harris and Campbell,
famous typological morphosyntactic generalizations 1995: 199ff.). One empirical problem for the claim
first presented in Greenberg, 1963. These generaliza- is that affixes sometimes change positions in the word
tions focused in particular on clusters of morpheme relative to other affixes and even relative to the stem,
orderings that tended to appear together as a bundle – and clitics sometimes change position when they turn
for instance, OV word order with postpositions, into affixes. A major reason for the widespread skep-
Adjective-Noun, Determiner-Noun, Relative-Noun, ticism about all approaches to syntactic reconstruc-
and other word-order patterns. A language in which tion that focus on reconstructing word-order patterns
all the statistically predominant ordering patterns ap- is hinted at in one of Watkins’ objections: not only is
pear together is said (in this view) to be typologically there much more to syntax than word order, but it
consistent. The fundamental argument relevant to is also impossible to know, from surface word order
typologically-based syntactic reconstruction is that alone, the nature of the grammar that produced that
inconsistencies in ordering patterns, especially as word order. So, for instance, a dominant SVO sentential
reflected in minor patterns in restricted environments, word-order pattern in one language might result from a
reflect older consistent patterns, providing a means of grammar that specifies SVO word order, but in another
reconstructing the earlier morpheme-order patterns. language it might result from a verb-second rule.
When evidence for certain patterns is lacking (for The search for universals that would permit the
instance because of the absence of texts in an attested establishment of a firm directionality in syntactic
ancient language), the existing orderings, e.g., Noun- change, and thus a sure means of syntactic recon-
Adjective, are used to infer other orderings, e.g., VO struction, is continued in some of the research
word order. In other words, the typological clustering on grammaticalization, and this research goes well
of the various ordering patterns provides directionali- beyond word-order studies. Still, proposals of univer-
ty of syntactic change and thus permits the reconstruc- sality have not met with general acceptance. See, for
tion of earlier syntactic orders. instance, Harris and Campbell (1995: 336–338) for a
The most prominent proponent of this approach criticism of claims that certain morphosyntactic
to syntactic reconstruction is Winfred Lehmann (e.g., changes are predictably unidirectional. Many
Reconstruction, Syntactic 399

linguists, including Harris and Campbell themselves, As a means of overcoming this difficulty, Harris
would agree that a weaker sense of directionality and Campbell propose the concept of syntactic corre-
might prove useful in syntactic reconstruction, in spondence. Although they acknowledge that ‘‘syntax
the same way that probabilities are used in phonolog- has nothing quite like the duality of patterning (dou-
ical reconstruction: all things being equal, one would ble articulation) in phonology’’ (1995: 349), they
reconstruct *p rather than *b for an intervocalic p : b argue that sentences in related languages can be con-
correspondence, because intervocalic voicing is more sidered to correspond if they mean the same thing and
common, and more likely on phonetic grounds, than if the grammatical morphemes that are crucially rele-
intervocalic devoicing. Some (not all) of the proposed vant to the structure point under consideration are
universals of morphosyntactic change would meet cognate (p. 349), and if they are ‘‘responses to identi-
this ‘more probable’ criterion. cal or essentially identical stimuli in two stages of
The recent upsurge of interest in syntactic a language’’ (p. 350). This last notion – that identical
reconstruction is much less homogeneous than the stimuli can be predicted to produce linguistically
typological approach of the 1970s. Perhaps the most equivalent utterances – seems at best overoptimistic;
cited recent contribution to the debate, both in its it is surely not supported by psycholinguistic evi-
own right and as a stimulus to further research dence. Harris and Campbell also emphasize that
(much of which offers opposing views), is Harris their goal ‘‘is to establish correspondence patterns,
and Campbell’s Chapter 12, ‘Reconstruction of syn- not corresponding sentences’’ (p. 350), so in fact
tax’ (1995: 344–376). Harris and Campbell’s ap- their proposal is that there are cognate sentence
proach is criticized in Lightfoot, 2002a, and the patterns, not cognate sentences per se.
discussion is continued in a follow-up exchange Crucially, they argue for the existence of regularity
(Campbell and Harris, 2002; Lightfoot, 2002b). The in syntactic change, equivalent to the regularity
two most difficult issues, for syntactic reconstruction hypothesis for phonological change (pp. 326 ff.) –
in general as well as in these articles, concern the but with a sense of regularity, namely ‘‘rule-governed
problem of identifying syntactic correspondences in and non-random’’ (p. 326), that differs sharply from
related languages and the problem of directionality. the sense in which phonological change is hypoth-
Neither issue is new, but the former in particular has esized to be regular. An analogic change that levels a
received more attention recently than in (for instance) morphophonemic stem alternation in an inflectional
the 1970s (but see Watkins, 1976). paradigm is regular in Harris and Campbell’s sense,
The crux of the correspondence problem is articu- but it is not directly comparable to the concept of
lated by Werner Winter (1984: 622–623, and see regular sound change that has guided applications
also the discussions in Harris and Campbell, 1995: of the Comparative Method for over a century: regu-
345–353 and Rankin, 2003: 201–206): ‘‘Sentences lar sound change is form-based only, while analogic
are formed, not learned; morphemes and simple lex- change is both form- and meaning-based (as seen,
emes are learned, not formed.’’ The difficulty is that for instance, in certain analogic leveling processes in
application of the Comparative Method requires ele- Serbo-Croatian that affect noun declension but
ments that show recurring correspondences in both not adjective declension – Thomason, 1976). The
form and meaning, and in practice this has always morphosyntactic changes discussed by Harris and
meant reconstructing proto-language features on the Campbell in this context are presumably driven by
basis of cognate morphemes – that is, morphemes in analogy, not by sound change. Another major prob-
two or more daughter languages that are descended lem that arises for Harris and Campbell’s notion of
from the same morpheme in their shared parent lan- cognate sentence patterns is the same as a problem
guage. The method has been spectacularly successful noted above for the typological approach to syntactic
in the reconstruction of individual morphemes, both reconstruction: the same syntactic output in two dif-
words and affixes, and of phonological features ferent languages might well be produced by quite
abstracted from the reconstructed morphemes; recon- different grammars.
struction of partial morphological patterns has also A different line of research aimed at reconstructing
been carried out successfully, especially where ana- syntax focuses on the implications of changes in
logic changes that have transformed some daughter- parameter settings (e.g., Roberts, 1998; Longobardi,
language paradigms are fairly transparent. But purely 2001; compare the critical discussion in Lightfoot,
syntactic structures – those which, unlike construc- 2002a: 127–130). But until an approach based on
tions that are anchored by such morphemes as parameter settings is worked out in more detail, in-
the question particle used in the formation of yes/ cluding specific examples, the idea is difficult to assess.
no questions in some language families – offer no Can any safe general conclusions be drawn about
cognate morphemes to base a reconstruction on. the feasibility of syntactic reconstruction? Perhaps.
400 Reconstruction, Syntactic

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University Press.
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