Proto-Indo-European Reality and Reconstruction (Pulgram 1959)

Proto-Indo-European Reality and Reconstruction (Pulgram 1959)

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"But it must be conceded that such a reconstruction is something of a
fiction since the terms proto, ur and primitive are firmly attached to
formulae which are timeless, non-dialectical, and non-phonetic
(Pulgram 1959, p.422)."

"Anything in linguistics that is timeless, nondialectal, and
nonphonetic by definition does not represent a real language. That is
to say, the uniformity which reconstructed Proto Indo European
exhibits is not representative of a reality. We must not make the
mistake of confusing our methods, and the results flowing from them as
facts; we must not delude ourselves that our retrogressive method of
reconstruction matches step by step, the real progression of
linguistic history. For example, a procedure whereby we chose to
arrive at a reconstructed proto language, be it Proto-Indo-European or
Proto-Athapaskan, by comparing languages in pairs and advancing by way
of a pyramid until we have reached the summit, the reconstructed proto
language, does not in the least entitle us to believe, or postulate,
that historically the reverse process—that is a series of binary
splits-actually occurred. And completely untenable is the theory I
(Pulgram) have heard propounded, that all linguistic differentiation
is always due to such binary splits in series. We may rightly claim,
however, that the kind of fabricated reconstruction which we call
Proto-Indo-European complies with the very strictest requirements of
linguistic uniformity imaginable (Pulgram 1959, pp. 422-423).

Pulgram, Ernst (1959). Proto-indo-european reality and
reconstruction. Langauge, Vol. 35 (3), pp. 421-426.

posted by M. Kelkar