real proto-lang

[petegray]

> Cannot one say that the "abstractionist position" is merely the
> result of the application of the method, whereas everything beyond this
> is an *interpretation* of this result?

I would make the abstractionist position even thinner.   It is not the final
result of application of the method, but merely a description of the
attested state of affairs.   I think it is application of the method which
moves beyond mere description to posit an original sound or root.

Thus saying that the symbol *bh is a code for the correspondences in
attested IE languages is mere description plus label;   whereas positing an
actual sound *bh is application of the method.   Interpretation comes in
when we then try to make sense of that sound, and say either that PIE needed
to have *ph as well, or that the sound we write *bh was breathy voice, or
allophonically aspirated, or a fricative or whatever.

There are thus (for me) three stages, and the refusal to move from the first
to the second seems an unnecessary limitation on what we can claim to  know.

Peter