real proto-lang

[Jurgis Pakerys]

[Larry Trask:]
> In a message dated 6/27/2001 12:29:59 AM, larryt at cogs.susx.ac.uk writes:
> << And what is that?  So far as I know, all I have ever claimed about the
> comparative method is that it cannot produce proto-languages that never
> existed.  And that's just true.  Do you want to challenge this? >>

[Steve Long:]
> Yes.

> There are perhaps a number of ways in which the comparative method might
> "produce" a language or a part of a language that that never existed. There
> is perhaps one way that is relevant to this discussion.

I hope prof. Trask didn't mean that _all_ proto-languages (produced by
comparative method) really existed. I've always imagined that there's some
degree of uncertainty and those proto-languages cannot be compared to the
real ones.

Consider the Baltic branch. We have Lithuanian and Latvian (so called
Eastern Baltic) still alive, some corpus of Old Prussian (so called Western
Baltic), and only bits of data on other Baltic and considered-to-be-Baltic
languages. Let's say we reconstruct a proto-Baltic based on the data
currently available. I think our reconstruction would be just one of a
number of possibilities (but not the real proto language that existed). Just
because we know nothing about Baltic languages that died out leaving no
records, just becaue we can't be 100% sure about Old Prussian facts (try
reconstructing Latvian using just 16th century translations from German ;),
etc.

Maybe I'm wrong, but it looks very hard to reconstruct a _real_
proto-language. Sometimes we're able to reconstruct only fragments of it
(I'm not saying this about very well documented language families). I guess
it's better to understand those proto-languages as some tools of comparative
linguistics than real languages that existed at some point of time.

Best regards,
Jurgis Pakerys

PhD student
Vilnius university