Routledge Dictionary of Language and Linguistics
Procedure for determining older, non-recorded, or insufficiently attested stages of a language. Proceeding from our knowledge of possible (e.g. phonetic) types of change (
sound change), (pre)historic language systems are reconstructed little by little on the basis of synchronic linguistic data. Such data consist in alternating, varying forms that can be systematically traced back to historically invariable structures. Depending on whether such synchronic alternations can be observed in one language or between several genetically related languages, two methods of reconstruction are distinguished. (a) Internal (or language-internal) reconstruction: historical characteristics of structures are reconstructed on the basis of systematic relationships within a given language. Apart from ablaut and Verner’s law, the best example for internal reconstruction is laryngeal theory: in 1879, F.de Saussure hypothesized the existence of Indo-European laryngeals based on internal structural aspects. His theory was later corroborated through actual evidence of such traces in newly discovered Hittite. (b) External (comparative) reconstruction: reconstruction takes place by comparing particular phenomena in several related (or presumably related) languages. Comparative reconstruction became particularly significant and its methods underwent refinement in the nineteenth century with the elucidation of the Indo-European obstruent (= stops and fricatives) system, which was reconstructed by comparing the consonantal systems of the individual Indo-European languages ( Grimm’s law, Verner’s law). Comparative reconstruction forms the foundation of comparative linguistics and was used primarily by the Neogrammarians in connection with their thesis of the regularity of sound laws.
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Indo-European, language change, linguistics
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