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

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.