ABSTRACT
This chapter gives an overview of earlier research on syntactic reconstruction and the problems that have been proposed as invalidating it as an empirical enterprise. During the 1970s, a new methodology to reconstruct syntax was suggested on the basis of the typological universals that Joseph H. Greenberg had established. The chapter examines theories of language change, in particular the kind of changes one finds with argument structure constructions and their case frames. It focuses on reconstructing argument structure and case frames for proto-stages. Particularly for case marking and argument structure, several different types of changes have been documented in the field of historical syntax. Despite the strong opinion against syntactic reconstruction, there are some scholars who have consistently argued for the possibility of reconstructing syntax. As many other languages in the world, the Indo-European languages exhibit structures where the subject-like argument is not in the nominative case, but occurs case-marked in some oblique case, like accusative, dative, genitive, etc.
