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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, as opposed to the method of internal reconstruction, which analyzes the internal development of a single language over time.
Ordinarily both methods are used together to reconstruct prehistoric phases of languages, to fill in gaps in the historical record of a language, to discover the development of phonological, morphological, and other linguistic systems, and to confirm or refute hypothesized relationships between languages.
• The comparative method was developed over the 19th century. Key contributions were made by the Danish scholars Rasmus Rask and Karl Verner and the German scholar Jacob Grimm. The first linguist to offer reconstructed forms from a proto-language was August Schleicher, in his “Compendium der vergleichenden Grammatik der indogermanischen Sprachen”, originally published in 1861.
• The comparative method aims to prove that two or more historically attested languages are descended from a single proto-language by comparing lists of cognate terms. From them, regular sound correspondences between the languages are established, and a sequence of regular sound changes can then be postulated, which allows the proto-language to be reconstructed.
• Relation is deemed certain only if at least a partial reconstruction of the common ancestor is feasible, and if regular sound correspondences can be established with chance similarities ruled out.
• The comparative method developed out of attempts to reconstruct Van Boxhorn's proto-language, which only in 1810 was named Proto-Indo-European (PIE) by the Danish geographer Conrad Malte-Brun. The first professional comparison between the Indo-European languages known then was made by the German linguist Franz Bopp in 1816.
• Though he did not attempt a reconstruction, he demonstrated that Greek, Latin and Sanskrit shared a common structure and a common lexicon.
Friedrich Schlegel in 1808 first stated the importance of using the eldest possible form of a language when trying to prove its relationships;
• in 1818, Rasmus Christian Rask developed the principle of regular sound changes to explain his observations of similarities between individual words in the Germanic languages and their cognates in Greek and Latin.
• Jacob Grimm – better known for his Fairy Tales – in Deutsche Grammatik (published 1819-37 in four volumes) made use of the comparative method in attempting to show the development of the Germanic languages from a common origin, the first systematic study of diachronic language change.
• Both Rask and Grimm were unable to explain apparent exceptions to the sound laws that they had discovered. Although Hermann Grassmann explained one of these anomalies with the publication of Grassmann's law in 1862, it was Karl Verner who in 1875 made a methodological breakthrough when he identified a pattern now known as Verner's law.
• Neogrammarians at the University of Leipzig in the late 1800s led them to conclude that all sound changes were ultimately regular, resulting in the famous statement by Karl Brugmann and Hermann Osthoff in 1878 that "sound laws have no exceptions". This idea is fundamental to the modern comparative method, since the method necessarily assumes regular correspondences between sounds in related languages, and consequently regular sound changes from the proto-language.
• This Neogrammarian Hypothesis led to application of the comparative method to reconstruct Proto-Indo-European, with Indo-European being at that time by far the most well-studied language family. Linguists working with other families soon followed suit, and the comparative method quickly became the established method for uncovering linguistic relationships.
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