Comparative linguistics

Comparative linguistics studies similarities and differences among languages, especially to establish historical relationships and reconstruct ancestral languages.

Comparative method: A procedure for establishing language relationships and reconstructing ancestral forms through systematic correspondences. Its regular sound correspondences distinguish inherited similarities from accidental resemblance.
William Jones: An eighteenth-century British judge and philologist who identified striking parallels among Sanskrit, Greek, and Latin. His 1786 observation helped prompt systematic study of Indo-European relationships.
Historical linguistics: The study of how languages change over time and how their histories can be reconstructed. Comparative linguistics is one of its principal methods.
Indo-European languages: A family of languages including English, Hindi, Greek, and Persian, descended from Proto-Indo-European. Their classification is a landmark result of comparative study.
Language typology: The study of structural similarities and differences among languages, regardless of historical relationship. Typological similarity describes structure but does not by itself establish common ancestry.
Sound correspondence: A recurring relationship between sounds in words with related meanings across languages. Regular correspondences provide evidence for shared ancestry.
Franz Bopp: A German linguist who helped establish comparative Indo-European grammar as a scholarly discipline. His comparative work demonstrated how grammatical forms could reveal language history.
Phonological change: Change over time in the sound systems or sound patterns of a language. Regular sound changes explain why related words can look different.
Proto-Indo-European language: The reconstructed ancestor of the Indo-European language family. Comparative evidence has been used to infer its sounds, words, and grammar.
Lexicostatistics: A method that compares basic vocabulary to estimate degrees of relationship between languages. It relies on word counts rather than the comparative method's systematic sound correspondences.

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