10 Facts About Comparative method

In linguistics, the comparative method is a technique for studying the development of languages by performing a feature-by-feature comparison of two or more languages with common descent from a shared ancestor and then extrapolating backwards to infer the properties of that ancestor.

Aim of the comparative method is to highlight and interpret systematic phonological and semantic correspondences between two or more attested languages.

Comparative method developed out of attempts to reconstruct the proto-language mentioned by Jones, which he did not name but subsequent linguists have labelled Proto-Indo-European .

Comparative method did not attempt a reconstruction but demonstrated that Greek, Latin and Sanskrit shared a common structure and a common lexicon.

The Neogrammarian hypothesis led to the application of the comparative method to reconstruct Proto-Indo-European since Indo-European was then by far the most well-studied language family.

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Linguists working with other families soon followed suit, and the comparative method quickly became the established method for uncovering linguistic relationships.

Comparative method's reconstructions were, respectively, *hk, *xk, *ck, *sk, and ck .

Limitations of the comparative method were recognized by the very linguists who developed it, but it is still seen as a valuable tool.

Comparative method cannot recover aspects of a language that were not inherited in its daughter idioms.

Comparative method is used to construct a tree model of language evolution, in which daughter languages are seen as branching from the proto-language, gradually growing more distant from it through accumulated phonological, morpho-syntactic, and lexical changes.