Matthew L. Juge
Discussions of macrofamilies involving genetic linguistic relationships at great time-depths often lead to claims regarding the limits of the comparative method, in particular with regard to how long ago a familyıs proto-stage can be while still being reconstructible. These claims usually seem to be made without meaningful proof of the numbers claimed. One goal of the Reconstruction of Indo-European Project (RIEP, pronounced /rajp/) is to explore this issue in the well known language family Indo-European. The project consists of a growing database (using Microsoft FoxPro) of forms from various modern Indo-European (IE) languages and other modern languages which have had borrowing relations with IE languages. The old IE languages, such as Hittite and Ancient Greek, are excluded so as to provide a situation parallel to those faced with most language families, where attestation in written or recorded form is much more recent. Thus the project will depend of the comparative method to create reconstructions based solely on modern data. In the process of carrying out the project, I will create detailed sub-databases of sound correspondences among the IE languages.