I do not trust the Bar-Ilan University after this major gaffe

Or perhaps, it's more proper to be wary of old people who graduated in 1976?

Q

Has the results of linguistic reconstruction method ever been measured in how reliable they are? So, has any proto-language first been reconstructed and then had attestations of it discovered?
https://www.quora.com/Has-the-results-of-linguistic-reconstruction-method-ever-been-measured-in-how-reliable-they-are-So-has-any-proto-language-first-been-reconstructed-and-then-had-attestations-of-it-discovered/answer/Ayala-Choma

Answer requested by

Uppsala Rembra

Ayala Choma

B.A. in English Literature & Linguistics, Bar-Ilan University (Graduated 1976)

6.VIII.2023

You asked two very different questions here. Let’s start with the second one.

Since all languages change with time, you are obviously not going to find people now speaking a proto-language, whether or not it had been reconstructed in theory. I suppose you might find some written record of a language no longer in use and check it against some reconstruction of the language that somebody had done. But the usefulness of that would be awfully limited. You would not know how the writer pronounced what he wrote. You would not know how close his written style was to spontaneous natural speech. In the absence of a tradition of how the read it, it would not confirm or deny the accuracy of the reconstruction.

To return to the first question: It isn’t easy but it has sort of been done. Even today, of the thousands of languages spoken in the world, only a few have writing systems to preserve speech. In the past it was even less. And you need a lot of written records and at least a few people still routinely reading them. But there was Latin. It had loads of writing left behind and was still in routine use as a lithurgical language. It had lots of descendants: Italian, French, Spanish, Portuguese, etc. It was perfect.

So a well trained and sophisticated team of historical linguistists, none of whom had ever learned Latin, were asked to recontruct the common ancestor of all those Romance languages to see if the result would really be Latin. The result wasn’t perfect, but it really was pretty close. Only one thing looked bad. One vowel was consistently wrong. I don’t remember which, so for the purpose of the story let’s say there was always a short “e” instead of a short “a”. Nobody knew what to do about it for a while. Nobody found anything wrong with how they did the reconstruction.

The records of the Roman Senate were of course the records of educated aristocrates debating matters of state. But there were a couple of people there who spoke for the commoners and were by background commoners themselves. In one record, one of these people spoke and one of the aristocrates, while answering him, sarcstically immitated his speech by substituting a short “e” for a short “a”. Once this was noticed, everything became clear. Romance languages like French and Spanish are descended from the Latin of ordinary soldiers, not aristocrates. So the reconstruction techniques had accurately reproduced the soldiers’ speech.

So, yes, the reconstuction techniques of historical linguistics passed the test. But the test left us with the humbling knowledge that the future of our languages lies not in our fine poetry and oratory, but in our slang.

I commented twice

A

Hans-Georg Lundahl

6.VIII.2023

“So a well trained and sophisticated team of historical linguistists, none of whom had ever learned Latin, were asked to recontruct the common ancestor of all those Romance languages to see if the result would really be Latin. The result wasn’t perfect, but it really was pretty close. Only one thing looked bad. One vowel was consistently wrong.”

Impossible.

The six cases and the Latin future were lost before all of the Romance languages emerged.

So, no. That one vowel that was consistently wrong is actually NOT the only problem you run into when reconstructing proto-Romance without Latin.

Ayala Choma

7.VIII.2023

But since they were lost in late Latin, that was not a problem. That was a correct result.

Hans-Georg Lundahl

7.VIII.2023

No, they were not lost in late Latin.

Late Latin means the Latin of the Late Antiquity.

They were in some places, like Gaul or Spain or Italy lost at a far later stage, like reduced to two by the time of Gregory of Tours.

Gregory of Tours - Wikipedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gregory_of_Tours

This is already early Medieval. Even there, the cases are not completely lost, they are reduced to two. Plus a few extras mastered by the learned. Gregory can use Genitive plurals, fine, but to many of his hearers, that was just passive competence, not active competence.

The Senate still existed, and the City Roman Latin was more conservative than Italian Latin, the Italian Latin more conservative than that of Gregory of Tours.

For as long as the spoken language and written Latin remained considered as a single language, a state of affairs changing in the ninth C. for France, and two centuries later for Spain and Italy, the six cases were not completely lost. They were, beyond the still popular two case system for France and Spain, reduced to learned forms. Like “passé simple” in French.

On the other hand, when we do get to Gregory of Tours and what the spoken language must have been, we are already past what was the proto-language for all Romance languages. He didn’t speak Proto-Romance, when pronouncing his Latin, he spoke Gallo-Romance. Regional differences were already appearing when people lived under an emperor in the West.

In Africa, and at least later in Spain too, “together” must have been “iuncti, iunctae, iuncta” and accusative “iunctos, iunctas, iuncta” rather than Classic “iunctim” - to the non-African St. Jerome, from the Balkans and he spent time in Gaul too, “together” must by now have been “insimul” or “simul” … this is the reason why, when St. Augustine sharply told him to avoid posh Latin (like “iunctim”) he chose the word “simul” in Sirach 18:1, which St. Augustine on his hand didn’t take as “together” but as “at the same time” or “simultaneously” … so, Latin, the actual proto-language, was already splitting, and, as St. Jerome was told to avoid posh things, we can be sure it still had six cases at AD 400.

B

Hans-Georg Lundahl

6.VIII.2023

“In one record, one of these people spoke and one of the aristocrates, while answering him, sarcstically immitated his speech by substituting a short “e” for a short “a”. Once this was noticed, everything became clear. Romance languages like French and Spanish are descended from the Latin of ordinary soldiers, not aristocrates. So the reconstruction techniques had accurately reproduced the soldiers’ speech.”

Is this reflective of how much the Bar-Ilan university likes to make up just so stories for which not only no reference is given, but which simply are not even true at all?