Methods of comparative study of languages.pdf
- 1. Methods of comparative study of languages Prepared by Yuliia Prystavska and Marta Kashchuk (INA-36)
- 2. The 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. This field of study, known as comparative linguistics or historical linguistics, aims to uncover the historical development of languages and their genealogical connections.
- 3. Methods of comparative study of languages are: historical comparative method areal comparative method typological comparative method contrastive analysis
- 4. The historical comparative method reconstructs language features based on resemblances in descendant languages to prove their common descent from a single proto-language. Developed in the 19th century through the study of Indo-European languages, the comparative method is the standard approach to determine language relatedness. In comparative linguistics, the term "cognates" specifically refers to words that have survived in different languages from a common ancestral language. The word "cognate" itself means "born together." For example, the word "mother" exists in Latin, Greek, Old Irish, Slavonic, German, and English, among others, all sharing a similar form. Modern equivalents such as "mere" in French, "Mutter" in German, and "madre" in Spanish are also considered cognates. Historical comparative method
- 5. Areal comparative method The areal comparative method is used when studying languages bordering geographically.Such languages maintaining contact reveal common features, which constitute the so-called secondary affinity. The properties of time, place, and migration serve as criteria for the comparative arealmethod. Rasmus K. Rask examined all the languages bordering geographically on Norse to discover whether they were related. He was the first to recognize the relationship between the languages now called Germanic.
- 6. Typological comparative method Typological comparative method aims at establishing generallinguistic categories for the classification of both related and non-related languages into differenttypes. Linguistic typology provides a classificatory system for languages, grouping them based on their present-day characteristics without considering historical relatedness. Typological grouping can result in unrelated languages, such as Baltic and Pacific languages, being classified together based on typological similarities. Typological investigations have led to various classifications of languages, including isolating, agglutinative, inflectional, and incorporating languages.
- 7. Contrastive Analysis Contrastive Analysis is a systematic study of a pair of languages with a view to identify their structural differences and similarities. It is not concerned with classification, and, as the term contrastive implies, is more interested in differences between languages than in their likenesses. Contrastive analysis examines both related and unrelated languages, describing common and divergentfeatures. The procedures of contrastive analysis were first formulated by Robert Lado in his book "Linguistics Across Cultures." Contrastive analysis involves two steps: description and comparison.