Typographical inference

[X99Lynx at aol.com]

Just taking care of a loose end:

In a message dated 9/1/99 11:10:25 PM, kurisuto at unagi.cis.upenn.edu wrote:
<<If there's some other way of going from attested forms to reconstructions
of prehistoric forms without using the Comparative Method, I'd like to know
about it.>>

I wrote:
<<I believe internal reconstruction is one often mentioned.  Typographical
inference is another.>>

Sean Crist replied.
<<You're right; I should have mentioned Internal Reconstruction.  What you
mean by "typographical inference"?>>

I was hoping someone else would respond.  Here's my best account:

Philip Baldi mentions "typographical inference" as a third form of
reconstruction in Bernard Comrie's 'The World's Major Languages.' (1990), p.
33. Under that category he classifies the work done by Lehmann, Szemerenyi,
Hopper and Gamkrelidze -  and 'the typologically reconstructed obstruents'
that would mandate "an Anti-Grimm's law."  Lehmann in his textbook,
Historical Linguistics (3d ed, 1992) pp 96-113, describes various
typographical approaches including examples of reconstructions and a
discussions of contentive typology  (e.g., Klimov.)  You seen I think a fair
number of examples of typographical inference here on the list.

I also think one striking thing about the "typographical approaches"
described is their strength in helping those who must identify language-types
and structure in undeciphered text, i.e., "at ground zero."

(As a side bar, looking again at descriptions given above, I'd add that no
approach would seem to have a stronger claim on using 'semantics' than one
that addresses the broad concepts of tense, aspect, case, etc., which are
logically far more universal than the relatively unique and polymorphous
meanings of individual words.)

Regards,
Steve Long

[ Moderator's comment:
  I believe that Mr. Long means "typological" rather than "typographical."
  --rma ]