Talk:Linguistic reconstruction

Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment

This article is or was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Andreag1.

Above undated message substituted from Template:Dashboard.wikiedu.org assignment by PrimeBOT (talk) 02:38, 17 January 2022 (UTC)

Clarity for the layman

This article could use a bit of work. It's not very clear to someone like me who has not studied linguistics to this depth. Some real-life examples with explanations would be helpful. Not being familiar with the inside-ballpark terminology, the meaning of an asterisk symbol seems ambiguous to me. Please leave me a note at my talk page if you take any action or follow up, as I don't check my watchlist often these days. Thanks! Bob the WikipediaN ^{(talk • contribs)} 15:25, 31 March 2013 (UTC)

Removed category

Category:Reconstructed languages was a subcategory of Category:Constructed languages. I removed Category:Constructed languages on the grounds that "reconstructed language" and "constructed language" are two very different things. The former refers to a languages, such as Proto-Indo-European or Proto-Germanic, which is not directly attested but has been reconstructed based on various evidence; the exact reconstruction is often in dispute to a greater or lesser extent. Presumably, this means a language from farther back in time than the written record goes; usually a language with extant descendants.

A constructed language, however, is one which, instead of evolving more-or-less naturally, as all major extant languages did, was designed by someone; Esperanto is the most famous example.

Okay?--Solomonfromfinland (talk) 15:18, 3 February 2019 (UTC)

unclear attested form

Texts discussing linguistic reconstruction commonly preface reconstructed forms with an asterisk (*) to distinguish them from attested forms.
- OK. Understood.
An attested word from which a root in the proto-language is reconstructed - OK...
is a reflex. - OK.

Let's see an example:
fif -> *fiv -> five
*fiv is a reconstructed form, and according to the explanation above, it is NOT an attested form.
fif is an original and actually attested form.
five is the current form of the number 5 in English.

Now lets get back to the text:

More generally, a reflex is the known derivative of an earlier form, - huh?
which may be either attested or reconstructed. - OK. Still on track.
Wait a minute, both fif and fiv are known derivatives. What makes them "known"? I thought if it is unattested that means nobody ever heard it or recorded it!
Reflexes of the same source are cognates....
-OK, but I still think this needs a rephrase. פשוט pashute ♫ (talk) 13:33, 17 August 2020 (UTC)