text_combined: accuracy historical reconstruction writing linguist 5 1393 another topic martinha fub46 zedat fuberlin de martin haspelmath says true latin syntax could hardly reconstructed modern romance languages neither could latin morphology even view latin phonology would get romance distorted reconstruction protolanguage grammar always imperfect looking historical reconstruction done american languages largely phonological often wondered much could trust reconstructions one rules thumb languages item longer one syllable suspect polymorphemic longer two syllables almost certainly polymorphemic problem attempts reconstruction ignored areal phenomenon sometimes data simply unavailable know romance languages would say polysyllabic morphemes common anything make easier reconstruct latin since work course morphology romance languages much better known languages america also helps latin would imperfectly reconstructed hope native american languages anyone ever attempted exercise comparative method reconstruction latin romance languages compared results real thing reconstruction attested language descendents