Linguistic reconstruction is the practice of establishing the features of the unattested ancestor (
proto-languageA proto-language is the common ancestor of the languages that form a language family. Occasionally, the German term Ursprache is used instead....
) of one or more given languages. There are two kinds of reconstruction.
Internal reconstructionInternal reconstruction is a method of recovering information about a language's past from the characteristics of the language at a later date...
uses irregularities in a single language to make inferences about an earlier stage of that language.
Comparative reconstruction, usually referred to just as
reconstruction, establishes features of the ancestor of two or more related languages by means of the
comparative methodIn linguistics, the comparative method is a technique for studying the development of languages. It requires the use of two or more languages. It is opposed to the method of internal reconstruction, which studies the internal development of a single language over time. Ordinarily both methods are...
.
Reconstructed terms or phrases are prefaced with an asterisk (*), to distinguish them from attested terms.
- Anthony Fox, Linguistic Reconstruction: An Introduction to Theory and Method (Oxford University Press, 1995) ISBN 0-19-870001-6.
- Henry M.
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Linguistic reconstruction is the practice of establishing the features of the unattested ancestor (
proto-languageA proto-language is the common ancestor of the languages that form a language family. Occasionally, the German term Ursprache is used instead....
) of one or more given languages. There are two kinds of reconstruction.
Internal reconstructionInternal reconstruction is a method of recovering information about a language's past from the characteristics of the language at a later date...
uses irregularities in a single language to make inferences about an earlier stage of that language.
Comparative reconstruction, usually referred to just as
reconstruction, establishes features of the ancestor of two or more related languages by means of the
comparative methodIn linguistics, the comparative method is a technique for studying the development of languages. It requires the use of two or more languages. It is opposed to the method of internal reconstruction, which studies the internal development of a single language over time. Ordinarily both methods are...
.
Reconstructed terms or phrases are prefaced with an asterisk (*), to distinguish them from attested terms.
Sources
- Anthony Fox, Linguistic Reconstruction: An Introduction to Theory and Method (Oxford University Press, 1995) ISBN 0-19-870001-6.
- Henry M. Hoenigswald, Language Change and Linguistic Reconstruction (University of Chicago Press, 1960) ISBN 0-226-34741-9.