Overview of Issues in Mechanisms of Language Change (Haggerty 2009)

[Guest guest]

sections 5.2 and 5.3

http://tinyurl.com/d7bqum

 

 

 

" A significant consequence for historical linguistics lies in that mouse

nonetheless remains perfectly reconstructible to

 

the language the `Proto-Germans' spoke, even though they had no `computer

pointing devices'. We can reconstruct

 

phonological forms by reliable `sound laws'; but on the other side of the

form-to-meaning correspondence, we have

 

no exceptionless `meaning laws'. It is of concern, then, that `proto-vocabulary'

such as wheel, horse and plough has

 

been invoked to allow `cultural reconstruction' in order to date and locate

Indo-European, for example. For names

 

for technologies and species are precisely the semantic slots most likely to

call for the very processes that invalidate

 

the basic, flawed assumption of linguistic palaeontology: borrowing, or parallel

derivations or semantic shifts. The

 

lesson from how external contexts can drive semantic change is that linguistic

palaeontology cannot be relied upon (Haggerty, 2009). "

 

It will be interesting to see if Haggerty's distance networks insert Greek and

Armenian between Indic and Iranian languages as Dyen, Kruskal, Black's (1992)

tree did.

 

M. Kelkar