Diachronica - Volume 22, Issue 1, 2005

The morphological ordering relationships among a set of valence-changing suffixes found throughout the Bantu family have been of theoretical interest in a number of synchronic studies of the daughter languages. However, few attempts have yet been made to reconstruct the principles governing their ordering in the parent language. Based on a survey of over thirty Bantu languages, this paper proposes a reconstruction wherein the order of suffixes marking causativization and applicativization was fixed in Proto-Bantu. This reconstruction runs counter to approaches to morphosyntax where semantic scope is taken to determine the order of morphemes but is consistent with templatic approaches to morpheme ordering in the Bantu family.

This study aims to distinguish irregularities due to borrowing from those due to lexical diffusion and those due to expressivity. The method adopted proposes the comparison of virtual reconstructions as the basis for reconstruction. Virtual reconstructions are obtained by applying in reverse the phonological rules set up for the fundamental vocabulary to the cultural vocabulary. From that point it becomes possible to establish chronological stages for roots or words and assign an order to them. The method is illustrated by a study of names of fish in the Bantu languages of Gabon. We show migration currents from the east towards the west, and the comparison of virtual reconstructions reveals that the ichthyological culture is relatively recent and on the whole does not go back to the Proto-Bantu period.

An internal reconstruction of Hungarian based mostly on the morphophonemic alternations of the modern language yields dramatically different results from those obtained from a purely synchronic approach to the same data. This article presents such a reconstruction and argues that the striking contrast between the forms and processes it entails and those favored by a synchronic analysis demonstrates the need to give performance (parole) at least as much consideration as competence (langue) in the study of language history.