Comparative and typological perspectives on the reconstruction of the Indo-European "gutturals"

Date
1978-05
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
University of Calgary
Abstract
In recent decades there has been a trend in Indo-European studies to place greater weight on typological considerations than on purely comparative evidence in reconstructions. The most oft-cited study in this regard is, of course, Jakobson (1972), in which the author introduced the notion of implicational universals and lauded the "predictive power" of typological studies in reconstruction (p. 304). The present paper takes issue with the blanket application of typological considerations to problems of comparative reconstruction. The specific problem addressed is the set of "guttural" (an out-dated but still handy cover term for the palatal, velar and labio-velars) stops in Proto-Indo-European.
Description
Keywords
Linguistics, Historical linguistics, Proto-Indo-European language, Comparative linguistics, Typology (Linguistics)
Citation
Southerland, R. H. (1978). Comparative and typological perspectives on the reconstruction of the Indo-European "gutturals". Calgary Working Papers in Linguistics, 4(Spring), 9-26.