Reconstructing the Unwritten: Methodological Advances and Challenges in the Study of Ancient Languages
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.64229/chg34d13Keywords:
Ancient Languages, Historical Linguistics, Computational Phylogenetics, Proto-Language Reconstruction, Language Contact, Indo-European StudiesAbstract
The study of ancient languages, a cornerstone of historical and comparative linguistics, has been profoundly transformed in the 21st century. Moving beyond the traditional confines of philology and the Comparative Method, the field now integrates computational modeling, phylogenetic analysis, and sophisticated socio-linguistic frameworks. This paper provides a critical overview of the methodological evolution in ancient language research. It examines the enduring principles of the Comparative Method and internal reconstruction, highlighting their successes in reconstructing proto-languages like Proto-Indo-European. The paper then delves into the paradigm shift brought about by computational phylogenetics and cladistic models, assessing their power in modeling language divergence and dating proto-language splits, while also addressing critiques regarding their handling of language contact and horizontal transmission. Furthermore, the study explores the burgeoning field of corpus linguistics applied to digitized ancient texts, demonstrating how quantitative analysis can reveal syntactic patterns, semantic shifts, and sociolinguistic variation previously obscured by manual analysis. A significant portion of the discussion is dedicated to the central challenge of fragmentary data and the "unwritten" aspects of ancient languages (e.g., phonetics, register variation, non-standard dialects). The paper argues that a robust, multi-disciplinary approach-combining traditional philological rigor, computational power, and insights from archaeology, genetics, and anthropology-is essential for constructing more nuanced and testable hypotheses about our linguistic past. Three conceptual figures illustrate the comparative phylogenetic model, the feedback loop of multi-disciplinary research, and the spectrum of data completeness in ancient language corpora.
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