ABSTRACT
Recoverable proto-language diversification can be excluded in principle under certain assumptions about the natures of: the object of linguistic study; and the Comparative Method. Many problematic issues which appear in the literature on the Comparative Method appear to come about when scholars attempt to get the Comparative Method to answer questions and resolve problems in domains regarding which it has nothing directly to say. We could amend the Comparative Method so that it would generate ‘proto-language dialect variation’, or we can find some justification for protolanguages seeming to differ so radically from ‘observed languages’. In the post-1950s world it is traditional to list the daughter language forms in their taxonomic phonemic form. Allophonic data may provide critical evidence as to the proper characterisation both of the proto-forms and of the phonological history of the individual daughter languages.
