Grammatical Reconstruction - Don Daniels Kartoniert (TB)

There is still widespread disagreement among historical linguists about how or whether syntactic reconstruction can be done. This book presents a comprehensive methodology for syntactic reconstruction grounded in a constructional understanding of language. The author then uses that methodology to reconstruct Proto-Sogeram the ancestor to ten languages in Papua New Guinea. Chapters are devoted to phonology lexicon verbal morphosyntax nominal morphosyntax and syntactic constructions. The work culminates in a sketch of Proto-Sogeram grammar. Based largely on the author's original fieldwor k this is an innovative application of a novel methodology to new data and the most complete reconstruction of a Papuan proto-language to date. It will be of interest to scholars of language change language reconstruction typology and Papuan languages.