Pragmatics and Indo-European linguistics

The aim of this paper is to analyze some aspects of the relation between pragmatics and historical linguistics, especially as far as the study of proto-languages is concerned. This relation is shown to be twofold: pragmatics can offer a frame to explain some developments in the proto-language, but an accurate analysis of the proto-language can reveal some of the characteristics of its particular pragmatic system, too. The approach, however, is not theoretical; the main section of the paper deals with a number of questions concerning specific aspects of the pragmatics of Indo-European.