GENERAL LINGUISTICS AND INDO-EUROPEAN RECONSTRUCTION

There is good reason to be ambivalent about the usefulness of general considerations in linguistic reconstruction. As a heuristic device, a theoretical framework can certainly be helpful, but the negative potential of aprioristic considerations must not be underestimated. E.g., there is a whole range of phenomena which receive a natural explanation when we assume that glottalization is ancient in Germanic. The methodological question is: why have scholars been reluctant to identify the vestjysk stød with the English glottalization as a historical reality which may have been inher-ited from the proto-language? The role of general linguistics is to provide an idea of what can be expected in linguistic development, not by theoretical reasoning but by inspection of what actually happens. Denmark has always been a superpower in linguistics. There is no need to list all famous scholars who worked in this country and left their imprint on the history of linguistics, but there are two names which I want to mention here, viz. Otto Jespersen and Holger Pedersen. The point is that we have a lesson to learn from these two great scholars in connection with the relation between general linguis-tics and Indo-European reconstruction