From: alderson@cisco.com (Rich Alderson)
Subject: Re: Proto-languages: what are the rules?
Originator: alderson@leland.Stanford.EDU
Reply-To: alderson@cisco.com (Rich Alderson)
Organization: Cisco Systems (MIS)
Date: Tue, 12 Jan 93 01:56:53 GMT

In article <1k3wmj#3X2tH88WtzQs7tp3yw6svQZq=cowan@snark.thyrsus.com>, cowan@snark (John Cowan) writes:
>Disclaimer:  The following expresses a desire for an explanation, NOT a
>flame against the comparative method or even against its results.
>
>Something that's always puzzled me:  how do historical linguists decide
>what form should be the standard reconstructed form?  Consider the following
>two cases:

They're told in their classes in comparative method.  :->

In general, appeals are made to plausibility of development, based on such
things as known histories of languages, proposed linguistic universals, etc.

>In the reconstruction of Proto-Indo-European, we find that Germanic languages
>have /f/ where other IE languages have /p/ in a large number of words.
>Confidently, we reconstruct IE /p/ and postulate a sound-change that affected
>Germanic only.  Well and good.

However, recently there has been a suggestion that Germanic and Armenian (which
has a similar though not identical set of changes from standard PIE) may show
the original state of affairs, and the rest of Indo-European shows a shared
innovation.  This grows out of work begun to bring our reconstructions into
line with Jakobson's purported universal, that no language has voiced aspirates
without also having voiceless aspirates.

(The other objection, that no language has aspirates without also having /h/ as
a phoneme can be answered by assigning /h/ as one of the reconstructed laryn-
geals, which *I* would do for other reasons in any case.)

>But in the reconstruction of Proto-Romance, we find that Sard has /k/ where
>other Romance languages have /s/ in a large number of words.  In this case,
>the reconstruction is /k/, and the postulation is that a sound-change
>affected >all< the Romance languages except Sard.  Apparent methodological
>contradiction.

Not really.  After all, the methodology is to examine plausibility of proposed
changes.

There is, of course, an example of a change in the opposite direction within
Indo-European.  In Albanian, one[1] outcome of *s is a voiced palatal stop,
written <gj>:  The word for "snake," cognate with Latin serpens, Greek herpes,
Sanskrit sarpa-, is <gjarpr>.

[1] Unfortunately, I haven't studied Albanian myself, and have to rely on the
handbooks for information like this.  I should have availed myself of the
chance when I was at Chicago.

>I realize, of course, that classical Latin provides a check on Proto-Romance.
>Nevertheless, I suppose there must be other such cases that I have not heard
>of.  What general principle determines what is the Right Thing?

Occam's Razor.

So many more intermediate stages must be posited for a change from a dentalveo-
lar fricative to a palatovelar stop than vice versa that we find a change from
*k > s the more likely one.
-- 
Rich Alderson   'I wish life was not so short,' he thought.  'Languages take
                such a time, and so do all the things one wants to know about.'
                                                        --J. R. R. Tolkien,
alderson@leland.stanford.edu                              _The Lost Road_