Arjâm Vâks: Difference between revisions

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At any rate, it was not a deficiency of data that would render Schleicher's reconstruction utterly obsolete within a few decades of his death (the fatal blow would be dealt by the publication of Karl Brugmann's ''Grundriß'', starting in 1886). It was, if anything, a deficiency of method. For Schleicher, though a keen observer and a systematizer of data, was much less scientific than he believed himself to be. His vision of an early Indo-European language, which took very definite form in his mind, reflected a belief that such a language must be phonologically far more simple than its descendant languages, and while morphologically complex, also much more regular than its descendant languages.
At any rate, it was not a deficiency of data that would render Schleicher's reconstruction utterly obsolete within a few decades of his death (the fatal blow would be dealt by the publication of Karl Brugmann's ''Grundriß'', starting in 1886). It was, if anything, a deficiency of method. For Schleicher, though a keen observer and a systematizer of data, was much less scientific than he believed himself to be. His vision of an early Indo-European language, which took very definite form in his mind, reflected a belief that such a language must be phonologically far more simple than its descendant languages, and while morphologically complex, also much more regular than its descendant languages.


There were valid grounds for both beliefs, since languages do gain phonological complexity and morphological irregularity over time. What Schleicher did not consider, however, was that the reverse may be true as well. At any rate, current analyses of Proto-Indo-European show a language that is far more phonologically complex than Schleicher ever guessed, and one in which a great deal of morphological irregularity is present ''ab initio.''
There were valid grounds for both beliefs, since some languages do gain phonological complexity and morphological irregularity over time; however, Schleicher may not have sufficiently considered examples in which the reverse is true. At any rate, current analyses of Proto-Indo-European show a language that is far more phonologically complex than Schleicher ever guessed, and one in which a great deal of morphological irregularity is present ''ab initio.''


Schleicher's pursuit of an Indo-European ancestral language which fit his preconceptions required him to make many choices: which sounds to consider as subject to specific sound-laws, which to allow to be subject to random variation; which morphological variations to consider as original, and which to be regarded as falling away from an original symmetry of structure. In making these choices he was in part guided by adherence to the notion that Sanskrit and Avestan represented the most primitive recorded Indo-European languages; but he was even more guided by a very personal sense of linguistic æsthetics and elegance.
Schleicher's pursuit of an Indo-European ancestral language which fit his preconceptions required him to make many choices: which sounds to consider as subject to specific sound-laws, which to allow to be subject to random variation; which morphological variations to consider as original, and which to be regarded as falling away from an original symmetry of structure. In making these choices he was in part guided by adherence to the notion that Sanskrit and Avestan represented the most primitive recorded Indo-European languages; but he was even more guided by a very personal sense of linguistic æsthetics and elegance.
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