Internal Reconstruction

1
Commentary on Crowley

• Chapter 6
• Internal Reconstruction

2
Basic assumption of Internal Reconstruction

• Morphophonemic alternations contain historical
  information that can be extracted by assuming
  that the original language did not alternate.
• Example English s manifests as /s/, /z/ and
  /?z/.
• Assumption Older English had only ?s the
  contemporary language developed by sound change
  (loss of ?, voicing of s under statable
  conditions).

3
More synchronic alternations

• was/were, raise, rear (rhoticism)
• foot/feet (ablaut)
• sing/sang/sung (Ger. singen/sang/gesungen)
  (ablaut Laryngeal theory)
• knife/knives, wife/wives (voicing/V__V)

4
Crowleys Samoan Examples, p. 120

• Intransitive Transitive GLOSS
• inu inu-mia drink
• ?au ?au-sia break
• mata?u mata?u-tia fear
• ta?i ta?i-sia cry
• alofa alofa-?ia love
• fua fua-tia weigh
• ole ole-?ia cheat
• sila sila-fia see

5
Trust, but verify

• Results obtained by internal reconstruction are
  not usually taken seriously as historical fact
  unless they can be verified by independent
  evidence. (This is consistent with the principle
  of separation of synchronic and diachronic
  linguistics.)
• In the most famous cases (Verners Law,
  Saussures sonorant coefficientsLaryngeal
  Theory), Internal Reconstruction was used to
  solve seemingly intractable problems which the
  Comparative Method alone was helpless to solve.

6
Two of the greatest discoveries in linguistics
were obtained through Internal Reconstruction.

• Verners Law explained the exceptions to Grimms
  Law and opened the field to the possibility of
  the Regularity Hypothesis and the theory of the
  phoneme.
• Saussures theory of the PIE laryngeals, which
  broke the uniformitarian mold of the time, was
  confirmed 50 years later by the discovery of
  Hittite, a language that actually exhibited the
  predicted laryngeals.

7
Biographical sketch of Ferdinand de Saussure by
Suzanne Kemmer, Spring 2008 (web article)

• Ferdinand de Saussure, 1857-1913, was born in
  Geneva into a family of well-known scientists. He
  studied Sanskrit and comparative linguistics in
  Geneva, Paris, and Leipzig, where he fell in with
  the circle of young scholars known as the
  Neogrammarians. Brugmann, in particular, was his
  mentor, but he was also close to Karl Verner and
  others of the circle.

8
PIE ablaut sing/sang/sung

• In 1878, at the age of 21, Saussure published a
  long and precocious paper called "Note on the
  Primitive System of the Indo-European Vowels". He
  explained in greater and clearer detail than
  others who were coming to similar conclusions how
  the PIE ablaut system worked.

9
What is a sonorant coefficient?

• One of the most inspired parts of his analysis
  is the positing of 'sonorant co-efficients',
  consonantal elements that do not appear in any
  daughter language but can be hypothesized due to
  the systematic way the vowels are affected in the
  descendent languages, and due to position and
  distribution of such elements in the rest of the
  PIE system. Jerzy Kurylowicz later pointed out
  that Hittite, the last-discovered ancient
  Indo-European language, had consonants in just
  the positions predicted by Saussure's analysis.
  These consonants are now called laryngeals.

10
The next few slides are taken from the Ppt
Melanau Morphology
11
Nature of Internal Reconstruction

• Notice that formally speaking, internal
  reconstruction differs little from (synchronic)
  morphophonemics, whose goal is to posit an
  underlying form. In historical phonology, the
  same kind of result is interpreted as the older
  form, from which the attested data is derived via
  grammatical or phonological change.

12
Melanau Ablaut Problem
13
GLOSS BELAWI MATU-DARO DALAT KANOWIT
238 clear-cut tubas tibas tub?s tib?s n.c. n.c.
239 fell (tree) t?ba? t?ba? tiba? t?ba? t?ba?
240 chop,hack n.c. tut?k tit?k tut?k t?t?k
PROTO MELANAU BELAWI MATU-DARO DALAT KANOWIT
238 t__bas tubas tibas tub?s tib?s n.c. n.c.
239 t__ba? t?ba? t?ba? tiba? t?ba? t?ba?
240 t__t?k n.c. tut?k tit?k tut?k t?t?k
14
GLOSS BELAWI MATU-DARO DALAT KANOWIT
238 clear-cut tubas tibas tub?s tib?s n.c. n.c.
239 fell (tree) t?ba? t?ba? tiba? t?ba? t?ba?
240 chop,hack n.c. tut?k tit?k tut?k t?t?k
PROTO MELANAU BELAWI MATU-DARO DALAT KANOWIT
238 t?bas tubas tibas tub?s tib?s n.c. n.c.
239 t?ba? t?ba? t?ba? tiba? t?ba? t?ba?
240 t?t?k n.c. tut?k tit?k tut?k t?t?k
15
Hypothesis (following Blust 1988)

• Melanau ablaut involves verbal infixes -u-
  (active) and -i- (passive).
• The ablaut data raises a question about the
  nature of the root vowel that is replaced by
  ablaut.
• Dialect evidence shows a third vowelschwathat
  appears in the same position as ablaut vowels.

16
GLOSS BELAWI MATU-DARO DALAT KANOWIT
238 clear-cut tubas tibas tub?s tib?s n.c. n.c.
239 fell (tree) t?ba? t?ba? tiba? t?ba? t?ba?
240 chop,hack n.c. tut?k tit?k tut?k t?t?k
Underlying form (synchronic) BELAWI MATU-DARO DALAT KANOWIT
238 t?bas tubas tibas tub?s tib?s n.c. n.c.
239 t?ba? t?ba? t?ba? tiba? t?ba? t?ba?
240 t?t?k n.c. tut?k tit?k tut?k t?t?k
17
Synchrony to diachrony

• Using this schwa as evidence, by Internal
  Reconstruction we posit schwa as the underlying
  vowel in the root. However, by itself, this move
  is little more than a synchronic solution.
• Comparative evidence from other languages (and
  PMP) demonstrates that Melanaus ablauted roots
  reflect etyma containing penult schwa. This
  confirms the above an historical explanation.

18
GLOSS BELAWI MATU-DARO DALAT KANOWIT
238 clear-cut tubas tibas tub?s tib?s n.c. n.c.
239 fell (tree) t?ba? t?ba? tiba? t?ba? t?ba?
240 chop,hack n.c. tut?k tit?k tut?k t?t?k
PROTO MELANAU BELAWI MATU-DARO DALAT KANOWIT
238 t?bas tubas tibas tub?s tib?s n.c. n.c.
239 t?ba? t?ba? t?ba? tiba? t?ba? t?ba?
240 t?t?k n.c. tut?k tit?k tut?k t?t?k
19
Back to Crowley, Chapter 6
20
6.2 Limitations on internal reconstruction

• Every scientific procedure leads to trade-offs,
  and Internal Reconstruction is no exception.
• The point is, use the tools that are appropriate
  to the problem at hand.

21
Review Uses of irregular data.

• morphophonemic alternations Internal
  Reconstruction (Chap 6)
• borrowing language contact issues (Chap 12)
• analogy grammatical change vs. phonological
  change (Chap 7)
• variable data dialect change in progress (Chap
  10)
• sound symbolism semantic change (Chap 7)
• unexplained residue meaningful employment for
  future linguists (Chap 11)

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Internal Reconstruction

• LING 485/585
• Winter 2009