THE COMPARATIVE METHOD IN HISTORICAL LINGUISTICS

THE COMPARATIVE METHOD IN HISTORICAL LINGUISTICS

The comparative method in linguistics is anxious with the reconstruction of an earlier language or earlier state of a language on the premise of a comparison of related words and expressions in several languages or dialects derived from it. The comparative method was developed within the course of the 19th century for the reconstruction of Proto-Indo-European and was subsequently applied to the study of other language families. It depends upon the principle of normal sound change—a principle that, as explained above, met with violent opposition when it absolutely was introduced into linguistics by the Neogrammarians within the 1870s but by the top of the century had become a part of what could be fairly described because the orthodox approach to linguistics. Changes within the phonological systems of languages through time were accounted for in terms of sound laws.

Grimm’s law

The most famous of the sound laws is Grimm’s law (though Jacob Grimm himself didn't use the term law). a number of the correspondences accounted for by Grimm’s law are given in Table 1.

It will be observed that when other Indo-European languages, including Latin and Greek, have a voiced unaspirated stop (b, d ), Gothic has the corresponding voiceless unaspirated stop (p, t) which when other Indo-European languages have a voiceless unaspirated stop, Gothic incorporates a voiceless fricative (f, θ). the best explanation would appear to be that, under the operation of what's now called Grimm’s law, in some prehistoric period of Germanic (before the event of variety of distinct Germanic languages), the voiced stops inherited from Proto-Indo-European became voiceless and therefore the voiceless stops became fricatives. matters with relevance the sounds comparable to the Germanic voiced stops is more complex. Here there's considerable disagreement between the opposite languages: Greek has voiceless aspirates (ph, th), Sanskrit has voiced aspirates (bh, dh), Latin has voiceless fricatives in word-initial position (f) and voiced stops in medial position (b, d), Slavic has voiced stops (b, d), and so on. the commonly accepted hypothesis is that the Proto-Indo-European sounds from which the Germanic voiced stops developed were voiced aspirates which they're preserved in Sanskrit but were changed within the other Indo-European languages by the loss of either voice or aspiration. (Latin, having lost the voice in initial position, subsequently changed both of the resultant voiceless aspirates into the fricative f, and it lost the aspiration in medial position.) it's easy to determine that this hypothesis yields an easier account of the correspondences than any of the alternatives. it's also in unison with the very fact that voiced aspirates are rare within the languages of the planet and, unless they're supported by the coexistence within the same language of phonologically distinct voiceless aspirates (as they're in Hindi and other north Indian languages), appear to be inherently unstable.

Proto-Indo-European reconstruction

Reconstruction of the Proto-Indo-European labial stops (made with the lips) and dental stops (made with the tip of the tongue touching the teeth) is fairly straightforward. More controversial is that the reconstruction of the Proto-Indo-European sounds underlying the correspondences shown in Table 2.

Velar and palatal stops within the Indo-European languages

Greek Latin Gothic Sanskrit Slavic

k k h sh s

g g k j z

kh h/g/f g h z

p/t/k qu wh k k

b/d/g v/gu q g g

ph/th/kh f/v/gu w gh g

According to the foremost generally accepted hypothesis, there have been in Proto-Indo-European a minimum of two distinct series of velar (or “guttural”) consonants: simple velars (or palatals), symbolized as *k, *g, and *gh, and labiovelars, symbolized as *kw, *gw, and *gwh. The labiovelars could also be thought of as velar stops articulated with simultaneous lip-rounding. In one group of languages, the labial component is assumed to possess been lost, and in another group the velar component; it's only within the Latin reflex of the voiceless *kw that both labiality and velarity are retained (compare Latin quis from *kwi-). it's notable that the languages that have a velar for the Proto-Indo-European labiovelar stops (e.g., Sanskrit and Slavic) have a sibilant or palatal sound (s or ś) for the Proto-Indo-European simple velars. Earlier scholars attached great significance to the current fact and thought that it represented a fundamental division of the Indo-European family into a western and an eastern group. The western group—comprising Celtic, Germanic, Italic, and Greek—is commonly remarked because the centum group; the eastern group—comprising Sanskrit, Iranian, Slavic, and others—is called the satem (satəm) group. (The words centum and satem come from Latin and Iranian, respectively, and mean “hundred.” They exemplify, with their initial consonant, the 2 different treatments of the Proto-Indo-European simple velars.) Nowadays less importance is attached to the centum–satem distinction. But it's still generally held that in an early period of Indo-European, there was a law operative within the dialect or dialects from which Sanskrit, Iranian, Slavic and also the other so-called satem languages developed that had the effect of palatalizing the first Proto-Indo-European velars and eventually converting them to sibilants.

Steps within the comparative method

The information given within the previous paragraphs is meant as an instance what's meant by a natural law and to point the sort of considerations that are taken under consideration within the application of the comparative method. the primary step is to search out sets of cognate or putatively cognate forms within the languages or dialects being compared: for instance, Latin decem = Greek deka = Sanskrit daśa = Gothic taihun, all meaning “ten.” From sets of cognate forms like these, sets of phonological correspondences will be extracted; e.g., (1) Latin d = Greek d = Sanskrit d = Gothic t; (2) Latin e = Greek e = Sanskrit a = Gothic ai (in the Gothic orthography this represents an e sound); (3) Latin c (i.e., a k sound) = Greek k = Sanskrit ś = Gothic h; (4) Latin em = Greek a = Sanskrit a = Gothic un. a collection of “reconstructed” phonemes will be postulated (marked with an asterisk by the quality convention) to which the phonemes within the attested languages will be systematically related by means of sound laws. The reconstructed Proto-Indo-European word for “ten” is *dekm. From this way the Latin word may be derived by means of one sound change, *m changes to em (usually symbolized as *m > em); the Greek by means of the sound change *m > a (i.e., vocalization of the syllabic nasal and loss of nasality); the Sanskrit by means of the palatalizing natural law, *k > ś and also the sound change *m > a (whether this can be assumed to be independent of the law operative in Greek or not); and therefore the Gothic by means of Grimm’s law (*d > t, *k > h) and therefore the sound change *m > un.

Most 19th-century linguists took it as a right that they were reconstructing the particular word styles of some earlier language, that *dekm, for instance, was a pronounceable Proto-Indo-European word. Many of their successors are more skeptical about the phonetic reality of reconstructed starred forms like *dekm. they need said that they're no quite formulae summarizing the correspondences observed to carry between attested forms particularly languages which they're, in essence, unpronounceable. From this time of view, it might be a matter of arbitrary decision which letter is employed to talk over with the correspondences: Latin d = Greek d = Sanskrit d = Gothic t, and so on. Any symbol would do, as long as a definite symbol is employed for every distinct set of correspondences. the issue with this view of reconstruction is that it seems to deny the very raison d’être of historical and comparative linguistics. Linguists want to understand, if possible, not only that Latin decem, Greek deka, and then on are related, but also the character of their historical relationship—how they need developed from common ancestral form. They also wish to construct, if feasible, some general theory of sound change. this will be done providing some quite phonetic interpretation may be given to the starred forms. The important point is that the arrogance with which a phonetic interpretation is assigned to the phonemes that are reconstructed will vary from one phoneme to a different. It should be clear from the discussion above, as an example, that the interpretation of *d as a voiced dental or alveolar stop is more certain than the interpretation of *k as a voiceless velar stop. The starred forms don't seem to be all on an equal footing from a phonetic point of view.

Criticisms of the comparative method

One of the criticisms directed against the comparative method is that it's based upon a misleading genealogical metaphor. within the mid-19th century, the German linguist August Schleicher introduced into comparative linguistics the model of the “family tree.” there's obviously no point in time at which it will be said that new languages are “born” of a typical parent language. neither is it normally the case that the parent language “lives on” for ages, relatively unchanged, so “dies.” it's easy enough to acknowledge the inappropriateness of those biological expressions. No less misleading, however, is that the assumption that languages descended from the identical parent language will necessarily diverge, never to converge again, through time. This assumption is constructed into the comparative method because it is traditionally applied. And yet there are many clear cases of convergence within the development of well-documented languages. The dialects of England are fast disappearing and are much more similar in grammar and vocabulary today than they were even a generation ago. they need been strongly influenced by the quality language. the identical phenomenon, the replacement of nonstandard or less prestigious forms with forms borrowed from the quality language or dialect, has taken place in many alternative places at many various times. it'd seem, therefore, that one must reckon with both divergence and convergence within the diachronic development of languages: divergence when contact between two speech communities is reduced or broken and convergence when the 2 speech communities remain connected and when one is politically or culturally dominant.

August Schleicher, engraving

The comparative method presupposes linguistically uniform speech communities and independent development after sudden, sharp cleavage. Critics of the comparative method have found out that this case doesn't generally hold. In 1872 a German scholar, Johannes Schmidt, criticized the family-tree theory and proposed instead what's named because the undulatory theory, in step with which different linguistic changes will spread, like waves, from a politically, commercially, or culturally important centre along the most lines of communication, but successive innovations won't necessarily cover precisely the same area. Consequently, there'll be no sharp distinction between contiguous dialects, but, in general, the further apart two speech communities are, the more linguistic features there'll be that distinguish them.

Internal reconstruction

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The comparative method is employed to reconstruct earlier types of a language by drawing upon the evidence provided by other related languages. it should be supplemented by what's called the tactic of internal reconstruction. this is often based upon the existence of anomalous or irregular patterns of formation and also the assumption that they need to have developed, usually by sound change, from earlier regular patterns. as an example, the existence of such patterns in early Latin as honos : honoris (“honor” : “of honor”) et al. in contrast with orator : oratoris (“orator” : “of the orator”) et al might result in the supposition that honoris developed from an earlier *honosis. during this case, the evidence of other languages shows that *s became r between vowels in an ancient times of Latin. But it'd are possible to reconstruct the sooner intervocalic *s with a good degree of confidence on the premise of the inner evidence alone. Clearly, internal reconstruction depends upon the structural approach to linguistics.

The most significant 20th-century development within the field of historical and comparative linguistics came from the speculation of generative grammar (see above Transformational-generative grammar). If the grammar and phonology of a language are described from a synchronic point of take for an integrated system of rules, then the grammatical and phonological similarities and differences between two closely related languages, or dialects, or between two diachronically distinct states of the identical language will be described in terms of the similarities and differences in two descriptive rule systems. One system may contain a rule that the opposite lacks (or may restrict its application more or less narrowly); one system may differ from the opposite therein the identical set of rules will apply in a very different order within the one system from the order during which they apply within the other. Language change may thus be accounted for in terms of changes introduced into the underlying system of phonological and grammatical rules (including the addition, loss, or reordering of rules) during the method of language acquisition. to this point these principles are applied principally to sound change. There has also been a bit work done on diachronic syntax