Comparative method (linguistics) | Wikipedia audio article
Channel: wikipedia tts
Date: 2019-01-21

This is an audio version of the Wikipedia Article:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparative_method


00:02:28 1 Demonstrating genetic relationship
00:03:25 1.1 Terminology
00:06:30 1.2 Origin and development of the method
00:13:43 1.3 Application
00:14:17 1.3.1 Step 1, assemble potential cognate lists
00:16:24 1.3.2 Step 2, establish correspondence sets
00:18:52 1.3.3 Step 3, discover which sets are in complementary distribution
00:23:58 1.3.4 Step 4, reconstruct proto-phonemes
00:27:09 1.3.5 Step 5, examine the reconstructed system typologically
00:30:15 2 Limitations
00:30:25 2.1 Problems with the history of historical linguistics
00:33:30 2.2 Problems with the neogrammarian hypothesis
00:34:25 2.2.1 Borrowing
00:34:50 2.2.2 Areal diffusion
00:35:55 2.2.3 Random mutations
00:36:39 2.2.4 Analogy
00:37:29 2.2.5 Gradual application
00:38:41 2.3 Problems with the tree model
00:39:15 2.3.1 The presumption of a well-defined node
00:43:54 2.3.2 Subjectivity of the reconstruction
00:46:51 2.3.3 Additional models
00:47:37 3 See also



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SUMMARY
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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 with common descent from a shared ancestor, in order to extrapolate back to infer the properties of that ancestor. The comparative method may be contrasted with the method of internal reconstruction, in which the internal development of a single language is inferred by the analysis of features within that language. 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 hypothesised 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. Here is Schleicher's explanation of why he offered reconstructed forms:
In the present work an attempt is made to set forth the inferred Indo-European original language side by side with its really existent derived languages. Besides the advantages offered by such a plan, in setting immediately before the eyes of the student the final results of the investigation in a more concrete form, and thereby rendering easier his insight into the nature of particular Indo-European languages, there is, I think, another of no less importance gained by it, namely that it shows the baselessness of the assumption that the non-Indian Indo-European languages were derived from Old-Indian (Sanskrit).