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 fieldwork 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.
