LINGUIST List 26.157

Tue Jan 13 2015

Qs: Garden Path Sentences (India); Proto-forms in Historical Linguistics

Editor for this issue: Damir Cavar <damirlinguistlist.org>

Directory
        1.     Sharbatanu Chatterjee , Garden Path Sentences (India)
        2.     Ari Marappan , Proto-forms in Historical Linguistics
Message 1: Garden Path Sentences (India) Date: 28-Oct-2014
From: Sharbatanu Chatterjee <sharbatciitk.ac.in>
Subject: Garden Path Sentences (India)
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Are there any known examples of Garden Path Sentences, (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garden_path_sentence) in languages spoken in India (any language family)?



Linguistic Field(s): General Linguistics
Message 2: Proto-forms in Historical Linguistics Date: 17-Oct-2014
From: Ari Marappan <farmasiariv2yahoo.com>
Subject: Proto-forms in Historical Linguistics
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My question is whether proto-forms in Historical Linguistics are relevant/valid anymore?

I don't think they are as they are not scientific enough. I quote the following from Wikipedia:

//In general, the issue of the nature of proto-language remains unsolved, with linguists taking the realist or abstractionist position. Even the widely studied proto-languages, such as Proto-Indo-European, have suffered criticism due to being typological outliers with respect to the reconstructed phonemic inventory. The alternatives such as glottalic theory, despite representing a typologically less rare system, have not gained wider acceptance, with some researchers even suggesting the use of indexes to represent the disputed series of plosives. On the other end of spectrum, Pulgram (1959:424) suggests that Proto-Indo-European reconstructions are just ''a set of reconstructed formulae not representative of any reality''. In the same vein Julius Pokorny in his study on Indo-European claims that the linguistic term IE parent language is merely an abstraction that does not exist in reality, and it should be understood as consisting of dialects possibly dating back to the paleolithic, during which these formed the linguistic structure of the IE language group.[7] In his view, Indo-European is solely a system of isoglosses which held together dialects which were spoken by various tribes, from which the historically attested Indo-European languages emerged.[7]//

This is from Wikipedia: http://en. wikipedia.org/wiki/Proto- language
What is your opinion on this?



Linguistic Field(s): Historical Linguistics

Page Updated: 13-Jan-2015