Comparative linguistics (originally comparative philology) is a branch of historical linguistics that is concerned with comparing languages in order to establish their historical relatedness. Linguistics is the scientific study of language. ... Theoretical linguistics is that branch of linguistics that is most concerned with developing models of linguistic knowledge. ... Phonetics (from the Greek word φωνή, phone meaning sound, voice) is the study of sounds and the human voice. ... Phonology (Greek phonē = voice/sound and logos = word/speech), is a subfield of linguistics which studies the sound system of a specific language (or languages). ... For other uses, see Morphology. ... For other uses, see Syntax (disambiguation). ... Semantics (Greek semantikos, giving signs, significant, symptomatic, from sema, sign) refers to the aspects of meaning that are expressed in a language, code, or other form of representation. ... Lexical semantics is a field in computer science and linguistics which deals mainly with word meaning. ... Statistical Semantics is the study of how the statistical patterns of human word usage can be used to figure out what people mean, at least to a level sufficient for information access (Furnas, 2006). ... This page is a candidate for speedy deletion. ... Prototype Theory is a model of graded categorization in Cognitive Science, where some members of a category are more central than others. ... Stylistics is the study of style used in literary, and verbal language and the effect the writer/speaker wishes to communicate to the reader/hearer. ... In linguistics, prescription is the laying down or prescribing of normative rules for the use of a language, or the making of recommendations for effective language usage. ... In linguistics and semiotics, pragmatics is concerned with bridging the explanatory gap between sentence meaning and speakers meaning. ... Applied linguistics is the branch of linguistics concerned with using linguistic theory to address real-world problems. ... Language acquisition is the process by which the language capability develops in a human. ... Psycholinguistics or psychology of language is the study of the psychological and neurobiological factors that enable humans to acquire, use, and understand language. ... This article or section cites its sources but does not provide page references. ... Anthropological linguistics is the study of language through human genetics and human development. ... Generative linguistics is a school of thought within linguistics that makes use of the concept of a generative grammar. ... In linguistics and cognitive science, cognitive linguistics (CL) refers to the currently dominant school of linguistics that views the important essence of language as innately based in evolutionarily-developed and speciated faculties, and seeks explanations that advance or fit well into the current understandings of the human mind. ... Computational linguistics is an interdisciplinary field dealing with the statistical and logical modeling of natural language from a computational perspective. ... Descriptive linguistics is the work of analyzing and describing how language is actually spoken now (or how it was actually spoken in the past), by any group of people. ... Historical linguistics (also diachronic linguistics or comparative linguistics) is primarily the study of the ways in which languages change over time. ... Not to be confused with Entomology, the study of insects. ... Efforts to describe and explain the human language faculty have been undertaken throughout recorded history. ... A linguist in the academic sense is a person who studies linguistics. ... Unsolved problems in : Note: Use the unsolved tag: {{unsolved|F|X}}, where F is any field in the sciences: and X is a concise explanation with or without links. ... Historical linguistics (also diachronic linguistics or comparative linguistics) is primarily the study of the ways in which languages change over time. ...

Relatedness implies a common origin or proto-language, and comparative linguistics aims to reconstruct proto-languages and specify the changes that have resulted in the documented languages. In order to maintain a clear distinction between attested and reconstructed forms, comparative linguists prefix an asterisk to any form that is not found in surviving texts. Proto-language may refer to either: a language that is the common ancestor of a set of related languages (a language family), or a system of communication during a stage in glottogony that may not yet be properly called a language. ...

Methods

The fundamental technique of comparative linguistics is to compare phonological systems, morphological systems, syntax and the lexicon of two or more languages. In principle, every difference between two related languages should be explicable to a high degree of plausibility, and systematic changes, for example in phonological or morphological systems, are expected to be highly regular. In practise, the comparison may be more restricted, eg just to the lexicon. In some methods it may be possible to reconstruct an earlier proto-language. Although the proto-languages reconstructed by the comparative methods are hypothetical, a reconstruction may have predictive power. The most notable example of this is Saussure's proposal that the Indo-European consonant system contained laryngeals, a type of consonant attested in no Indo-European language known at the time. The hypothesis was vindicated with the discovery of Hittite, which proved to have exactly the consonants Saussure had hypothesized in the environments he had predicted. Saussure Ferdinand de Saussure (pronounced ) (November 26, 1857 – February 22, 1913) was a Geneva-born Swiss linguist whose ideas laid the foundation for many of the significant developments in linguistics in the 20th century. ... The Indo-European languages comprise a family of several hundred related languages and dialects [1], including most of the major languages of Europe, as well as many spoken in the Indian subcontinent (South Asia), the Iranian plateau (Southwest Asia), and Central Asia. ... In articulatory phonetics, a consonant is a sound in spoken language that is characterized by a closure or stricture of the vocal tract sufficient to cause audible turbulence. ... The laryngeals were three consonant sounds that appear in most current reconstructions of the Proto-Indo-European language. ... Hittite is the extinct language once spoken by the Hittites, a people who once created an empire centered on ancient Hattusas (modern Boğazkale) in north-central Anatolia (modern Turkey). ...

Where languages are derived from a very distant ancestor, and are thus more distantly related, the comparative method becomes impracticable. In particular, attempting to relate two reconstructed proto-languages by the comparative method has not generally produced results that have met with wide acceptance. A number of methods based on statistical analysis of vocabulary have been developed to overcome this limitation. The theoretical basis of such methods is that vocabulary items can be matched without a detailed reconstruction and that comparing enough vocabulary items will negate individual inaccuracies. The comparative method (in comparative linguistics) is a technique used by linguists to demonstrate genetic relationships between languages. ...

History

The earliest method of this type was the comparative method, which was developed over many years, culminating in the nineteen century. However, it has been criticized for example as being subjective. In the twentieth century an alternative method, lexicostatistics, was developed which is mainly associated with Morris Swadesh but is based on earlier work. This uses a word list of basic vocabulary in the various languages for comparisons. This also has been criticized, mainly because lexical comparison is considered to be less fundamental than cognate comparison. In linguistics, the technique of glottochronology is used to estimate the time of divergence of two related languages. ... Morris Swadesh (January 22, 1909 - July 20, 1967) was an American linguist. ... Cognate (Latin: cognatus co+gnatus, ie. ...

An outgrowth of lexicostatistics is glottochronology, which proposed a mathematical formula for establishing the date when two languages separated, based on percentage of a core vocabulary of 100 (earlier 200) items that are cognate in the languages being compared. Glottochronology has met with continued scepticism, and is seldom applied today. Even more controversial is mass lexical comparison, which disavows any ability to date developments, aiming simply to show which languages are more and less close to each other, in a method similar to those used in cladistics in evolutionary biology. However, since mass comparison eschews the use of reconstruction and other traditional tools, it is flatly rejected by the majority of historical linguists. The introduction to this article provides insufficient context for those unfamiliar with the subject matter. ... Mass lexical comparison or mass comparison is a highly controversial method developed by the well-known linguist Joseph Greenberg to find genetic relationships among languages in the remote past, beyond the limits of the traditional comparative method, or in situations where there are too many languages to practically apply the... It has been suggested that Clade be merged into this article or section. ... Evolutionary biology is a subfield of biology concerned with the origin and descent of species, as well as their change, multiplication, and diversity over time. ...

Recently more sophisticated tree and network based cladistic methods have been used to investigated the relationships between languages. These are considered by many to show promise but are not wholely accepted.

Such vocabulary-based methods are able solely to establish degrees of relatedness and cannot be used to derive the features of a proto-language, apart from the fact of the shared items of compared vocabulary. These approaches have been challenged for their methodological problems - without a reconstruction or at least a detailed list of phonological correspondences there can be no demonstration that two words in different languages are cognate. However, lexical methods can be validated statistically and by their consistency with independent findings of history, archaeology and population genetics. History studies the past in human terms. ... Archaeology, archeology, or archæology (from the Greek words αρχαίος = ancient and λόγος = word/speech/discourse) is the study of human cultures through the recovery, documentation and analysis of material remains and environmental data, including architecture, artifacts, biofacts, human remains, and landscapes. ... Population genetics is the study of the distribution of and change in allele frequencies under the influence of the four evolutionary forces: natural selection, genetic drift, mutation, and migration. ...

Other related fields

There are other branches of linguistics that involve comparing languages, which are not, however, part of comparative linguistics:

• Linguistic typology compares languages in order to classify them by their features. Its ultimate aim is to understand the universals that govern language, and the range of types found in the world's language is respect of any particular feature (word order or vowel system, for example). Typological similarity does not imply a historical relationship. However, typological arguments can be used in comparative linguistics: one reconstruction may be preferred to another as typologically more plausible.
• Contact linguistics examines the linguistic results of contact between the speakers of different languages, particular as evidenced in loan words. Any empirical study of loans is by definition historical in focus and therefore forms part of the subject matter of historical linguistics. One of the goals of etymology is to establish which items in a language's vocabulary result from linguistic contact. This is also an important issue both for the comparative method and for the lexical comparison methods, since failure to recognize a loan may distort the findings.
• Contrastive linguistics compares languages usually with the aim of assisting language learning by identifying important differences between the learner's native and target languages. Contrastive linguistics deals solely with present-day languages.

There is also a wide body of publications containing language comparisons that are considered pseudoscientific by linguists; see pseudoscientific language comparison. Linguistic typology is the typology that classifies languages by their features. ... A linguistic universal is a statement that is true for all natural languages. ... Language contact occurs when speakers of distinct speech varieties interact. ... A loanword (or a borrowing) is a word taken in by one language from another. ... Not to be confused with Entomology, the study of insects. ... The manner in which a child acquires language is a matter long debated by linguists and child psychologists alike. ... Phrenology is regarded today as a classic example of pseudoscience. ... This article or section does not cite its references or sources. ...

See also

• Contrastive analysis
• Historical linguistics
• Comparative method
• Glottochronology
• Mass lexical comparison
• Sound law

A contrastive analysis describes the structural differences and similarities of two or more languages. ... Historical linguistics (also diachronic linguistics or comparative linguistics) is primarily the study of the ways in which languages change over time. ... The comparative method (in comparative linguistics) is a technique used by linguists to demonstrate genetic relationships between languages. ... The introduction to this article provides insufficient context for those unfamiliar with the subject matter. ... Mass lexical comparison or mass comparison is a highly controversial method developed by the well-known linguist Joseph Greenberg to find genetic relationships among languages in the remote past, beyond the limits of the traditional comparative method, or in situations where there are too many languages to practically apply the... Sound change or phonetic change is a historical process of language change consisting in the replacement of one speech sound or, more generally, one phonetic feature by another in a given phonological environment. ...

Bibliography

• August Schleicher: Compendium der vergleichenden Grammatik der indogermanischen Sprachen. (Kurzer Abriss der indogermanischen Ursprache, des Altindischen, Altiranischen, Altgriechischen, Altitalischen, Altkeltischen, Altslawischen, Litauischen und Altdeutschen.) (2 vols.) Weimar, H. Boehlau (1861/62); reprinted by Minerva GmbH, Wissenschaftlicher Verlag, ISBN 3-8102-1071-4
• Karl Brugmann, Berthold Delbrück, Grundriss der vergleichenden Grammatik der indogermanischen Sprachen (1886-1916).

• Raimo Anttila, Historical and Comparative Linguistics (Benjamins, 1989) ISBN 90-272-3557-0
• Theodora Bynon, Historical Linguistics (Cambridge University Press, 1977) ISBN 0-521-29188-7
• Richard D. Janda and Brian D. Joseph (Eds), The Handbook of Historical Linguistics (Blackwell, 2004) ISBN 1-4051-2747-3
• Roger Lass, Historical linguistics and language change. (Cambridge University Press, 1997) ISBN 0-521-45924-9
• Winfred P. Lehmann, Historical Linguistics: An Introduction (Holt, 1962) ISBN 0-03-011430-6
• R.L. Trask (ed.), Dictionary of Historical and Comparative Linguistics (Fitzroy Dearborn, 2001) ISBN 1-57958-218-4