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Comments on Why is linguistics limited in how much it can look back in time?

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Why is linguistics limited in how much it can look back in time?

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I've often seen that "we can only look back in time a short distance in linguistics". What prevents linguistics from deducing information far in the past? Is this limit something that can be pushed back with development of the science of linguistics?

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user53100‭ wrote over 4 years ago · edited over 4 years ago

I'm intending for this to be a "canonical" question, so feel free to improve on the post. For reference, here is an answer on Stack Exchange that answers part of this question.