Pre and Proto- (was Re: Ablaut ...)

[Koontz John E]

On Mon, 3 Sep 2001 BARudes at aol.com wrote:
> My quibble is with how we use the term pre-Proto-Siouan.  Since the
> only well documented Catawban language (at the moment, but see below)
> is Catawba, in both its dialects, unless a feature is attested both in
> the Siouan languages and Catawban languages, it cannot be ascribed to
> Proto-Siouan-Catawban.  Since Catawba is the only language that we are
> sure is distantly related to Siouan (although Yuchi may someday be
> proven to be in the same boat), for something to be securely
> pre-Proto-Siouan, it must be attested in Catawba, and therefore belong
> to Proto-Siouan-Catawban.  Anything ascribed to a purported
> pre-Proto-Siouan that is not attested in Catawba is presumably an
> internal reconstruction within Proto-Siouan. While internal
> reconstruction within Proto-Siouan is fine, the results must be viewed
> with great caution when they cannot be confirmed with data from
> Catawba.

I had always understood proto-X to refer to a language (or some details of
it) reconstructed across a family of languages X, while pre-X referred to
internal reconstructions within a language X.  So, pre-Mandan would refer
to internal reconstruction within Mandan, and pre-proto-Siouan to internal
reconstruction within proto-Siouan, not to a proto-langauge at one remove
from proto-Siouan.  Hence, pre-proto-Siouan would not need to reflect
anything from Catawban or to equate with pre-proto-Siouan-Catawban.
Naturally, anyone looking at pre-proto-Siouan, or even wondering about
proto-Siouan per se would feel free to be influenced by knowledge of
Catawban.