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Analytic and Synthetic Truth

المؤلف:  SPIKE GILDEA

المصدر:  RECONSTRUCTING GRAMMAR

الجزء والصفحة:  C5-P162

2026-08-24

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Analytic and Synthetic Truth

What we have been sketching is, of course, akin to the famous Kantian distinction between analytic propositions, true by definition and synthetic, drawn from experience and therefore only subject to lesser or greater degrees of confirmation. All the twisting and turning in the world cannot make reconstruction or sound laws give the complete certainty attaching to the truths of the disciplines of logic and mathematics.

It is crucial to note that the view of genetic linguistics as concerned with proving relationships and the notion of certain procedures as providing such proof are shared by the ‘conservatives’ who believe that there are a large number of independent, or at least not provably related families in the world, and those who undertake long-range comparisons like the Nostraticists. It is just that the ‘proofs’ of the latter are not accepted by the former as adequate. The Nostraticists, in particular, tend to belong to the camp of the reconstructionists, that is, those who believe that a reconstruction of an ancestral language proves the relationship of the descendant languages.