Internal Reconstruction of Phonemic Split

Diachronic split and phoneme borrowing in Resígaro (Arawakan)

“…Once ɯ was a bona fide member of the Resígaro phonological vowel inventory, it could act as a ‘receiving phoneme’ in the primary split depicted in figure 1. As every primary split originates in contextual allophonic variation (Marchand 1956: 247; Hoenigswald 1960: 91–93), the word-final merger of *a , inherited by Resígaro, and ɯ , which entered the language via contact with Bora, consisted in word-final allophones of *a becoming associated with the phoneme ɯ . Given the phonetic properties of a and ɯ , it is plausible that this partial merger was facilitated by the occurrence of higher or more centralized allophones of *a in word-final position, represented in (4) as *[ə] 15…”

Review of Gildea (1999): Reconstructing Grammar. Comparative Linguistics and Grammaticalization

“…Hence, it would have been good if the reader had been guided towards the direction the authors have taken in the 'jungle' of methodological and theoretical assumptions that has grown especially in Indo-European Comparative Linguistics since 200 years. Thus, it is amazing to see that Givón's article that is devoted to 'Internal Reconstruction' does not refer to Marchand 1956or Kuryłowicz 1964, only to mention two of the most prominent texts on Internal Reconstruction. The necessity to specify one's position in this 'jungle' becomes immediately apparent if we recall the fact that most of the languages discussed in the present volume lack a documented history.…”