See discussions, stats, and author profiles for this publication at: https://www.researchgate.

net/publication/324720037

COMPARATIVE AND HISTORICAL LINGUISTICS

Preprint · April 2018

DOI: 10.13140/RG.2.2.16700.54409

CITATIONS READS
0 4,348

1 author:

Lee ching Siew

University of Malaya
2 PUBLICATIONS   0 CITATIONS   

SEE PROFILE

Some of the authors of this publication are also working on these related projects:

how grice's maxims influence the conversation in Ellen DeGeneres Talk show View project

Comparative and Historical Linguistics View project

All content following this page was uploaded by Lee ching Siew on 24 April 2018.

The user has requested enhancement of the downloaded file.

LEE CHING SIEW TEC150004 ADRIAN LIM JIN HONG TEG140001
GOH KEE HANG TEC140009 WONG CHIN WEE TEN150008

COMPARATIVE AND HISTORICAL LINGUISTICS

1.0 BACKFGROUND

Comparative and historical linguistics are often treated as a single discipline, although they

actually differ considerably with respect to their goals and methods. Comparative linguistics is the

scientific study of language from a comparative point of views, which involved in comparing and

classifying languages. The main focus is to discover the features they share, while the classification

of languages proceeds by discovering the relevant defining principles for various classes of

languages. Languages can be compared and classified according to three different principles:

genetic, typological and areal. The basic unit of genetic classification is the language family, the

set of languages for which it can be proved that they developed from a single ancestor, called the

proto-language of that family. The basic unit of areal classification is the language area for which

it can be shown that they developed number of features as a consequence of mutual contacts.

Finally, the basic unit of typological classification is the language type, which refers to the set of

languages that share some typologically relevant set off feature.

Whereas, historical linguistics is the historical study of language change and development.

Its results are directly relevant to comparative linguistics, because only by taking into account the

history of languages can we understand why some of them share some of the features they do. Due

to the three following reasons:

1. Because they stem from some common source, in which case we speak about genetic

relatedness of languages.

2. Because they influenced each other during other periods of intensive language contact, in

which case we speak of areal affiliation of languages

LEE CHING SIEW TEC150004 ADRIAN LIM JIN HONG TEG140001
GOH KEE HANG TEC140009 WONG CHIN WEE TEN150008

3. Because their failure to share the features in question would violate some basic and non-

obvious principles determining the structure of a possible human language; in that case we

claim that languages are typologically related or belong to same linguistics type.

Historical and Comparative linguistics commonly begin with Sir William Jones’ 1792 speech

to the Royal Asiatic Society. However, many before him had noticed the connections between the

European languages and even had connected them with Sanskrit, and by the end of the 18th century

most scholars had stopped regarding Biblical Hebrew a priori as the mother tongue. Jones is

usually credited with voicing the thought that the "original Indo-European tongue" was not Latin,

not Greek, not Sanskrit, but some language for which no written evidence existed. This was a

crucial turning point for “comparative philologists” (as historical linguists were then called), for

they had a new task before them: to reconstruct a language from scratch.

Jones’ reputation as a scholar helped his hypothesis catch on. However, although the goal was

now in mind, the pathway was not. Etymologists still pieced together word-histories haphazardly,

one by one, and fell into many errors through lack of a method. A method of scientific inquiry was

not to be found until three Germanic philologists advanced the concept of systematic sound

correlations between the various members of the IE family. The works of Rasmus Rask (1818),

Franz Bopp (1816), and Jakob Grimm (1819) began the formulation of sound laws: rules of

language development believed to be absolute.

LEE CHING SIEW TEC150004 ADRIAN LIM JIN HONG TEG140001
GOH KEE HANG TEC140009 WONG CHIN WEE TEN150008

2.0 SCHOLAR CONTRIBUTION

2.1 JOHANNES SCHMIDT – WELLENTHEORIE

Wellentheorie or “Wave Model” was proposed by Johannes Schmidt in early 1870s, as an

alternative to August Schleicher’s Tree Model (Stammbaumtheorie). Wellentheorie was not only

included to the Tree Model, but also to the whole Comparative Method.

A synthesis should be possible, which preserves the principle of regularity and other useful

tenets of the Comparative Method, yet replaces the simplistic tree representations with a wave-

inspired approach. Under the Wave Model, each instance of language change arises somewhere

within the network, and from there diffuses to adjacent speaker groups. The propagation of the

change can thus be compared to a ‘wave’ which expands away from its centre as the new feature

is adopted across a broader territory. These waves are independent of each other, and are not

necessarily nested. Likewise, an innovation targeting a small cluster of dialects can be followed

by a later one targeting a larger group. Each event of language change defines its own isogloss, i.e.

a (typically) geographically contiguous zone, representable on a map, within which the innovation

diffused across idiolects and settled. In a linguistic continuum characterized by mutual

intelligibility across adjacent dialects, the normal situation is for these isoglosses to intersect

constantly, rather than be nested.

LEE CHING SIEW TEC150004 ADRIAN LIM JIN HONG TEG140001
GOH KEE HANG TEC140009 WONG CHIN WEE TEN150008

80% 70%
1 0 0 % 1 0 0 %

100% 90%

Diagram 1: The Wave Theory

As shown at the diagram above the waves represent languages from the same family.

Languages which are geographically located further away from the original source (pink circle)

also contain similar features with the parent language. The changes that occurred in the

languages were based on two factors, social factors whish related to status, lifestyle, gender

and others; and geographical factors that caused by migration factors. It stated that the further

away from the original source (pink circle), the more changes occur in the languages. Over

time, the layered innovations leave their footprint in each local dialect.

Yet crucially, whereas the Tree Model assigns linguistic diversify cation to social splits

with loss of contact, the Wave Model is compatible with scenarios where communities remain

in contact. In fact, it treats linguistic contact – in the form of multiple, crisscrossing events of

diffusion across mutually intelligible dialects – as the very key to understanding patterns of

language diversify cation. This is a radical shift in perspective. An important implication of

the Wave Model is that a given language can perfectly well belong to several partially

overlapping subgroups. A genealogical subgroup is here defined as a group of languages whose

LEE CHING SIEW TEC150004 ADRIAN LIM JIN HONG TEG140001
GOH KEE HANG TEC140009 WONG CHIN WEE TEN150008

ancestors participated together in the diffusion of one or several linguistic innovations, at a

time when they were mutually intelligible. Crucially, nothing in this definition entails that

subgroups should be discrete or nested, and indeed my claim is that genealogical subgroups

can perfectly intersect, and commonly do.

2.2 JACOB GRIMM – GRIMM’S LAW

Grimm’s Law, description of the regular correspondences in Indo-European Languages

formulated by Jacob Grimm in his Deutsche Grammatik (Germanic Grammar). It pointed out

prominent correlations between the Germanic and other Indo-European Languages of Europe

and Western Asia. The law was a systematic and coherent formulation, well supported by

examples, recognized as early as 1814 by the Danish philologist Rasmus Kristian Rask. It is

important for historical linguistics because it clearly demonstrates the principle that sound

change is a regular phenomenon and not a random process affecting only some words, as had

been thought previously.

It consists of three parts which from consecutive phases in the sense of a chain shift. The

phases are constructed as follows: (1) Proto-Indo-European (PIE) voiceless stops change into

voiceless fricatives, (2) PIE voiced stops become voiceless stops, and (3) PIE voiced aspirated

stops become voiced stops or fricatives. This chat can be represented as below:

 bʰ > b > p > ɸ

 dʰ > d > t > θ

 gʰ > g > k > x

 gʷʰ > gʷ > kʷ > xʷ

LEE CHING SIEW TEC150004 ADRIAN LIM JIN HONG TEG140001
GOH KEE HANG TEC140009 WONG CHIN WEE TEN150008

Here each sound moves one position to the right to take on its new sound value. Note that

within Proto-Germanic, the sounds denoted by ⟨b⟩, ⟨d⟩, ⟨g⟩ and ⟨gw⟩ were stops in some

environments and fricatives in others, so bʰ > b should be understood here as bʰ > b/β, and

likewise for the others. The voiceless fricatives are customarily spelled ⟨f⟩, ⟨þ⟩, ⟨h⟩ and ⟨hw⟩ in

the context of Germanic. The steps could also have occurred somewhat differently. Another

possible sequence of events could have been: (1) Voiceless stops are allophonically aspirated

under most conditions, (2) voiced stops become voiceless stops, (3) aspirated stops become

fricatives. This sequence would lead to the same end result. This variety of Grimm's Law is

often suggested in the context of the glottalic theory of Proto-Indo-European, which is followed

by a minority of linguists. This theoretical framework assumes that "voiced stops" in PIE were

actually voiceless to begin with, so that the second phase did not actually exist as such, or was

not actually devoicing but a loss of some other articulatory feature such as glottalization. This

alternative sequence also accounts for the phonetics of Verner's law (see below), which are

easier to explain within the glottalic theory framework when Grimm's Law is formulated in this

manner.
LEE CHING SIEW TEC150004 ADRIAN LIM JIN HONG TEG140001
GOH KEE HANG TEC140009 WONG CHIN WEE TEN150008

PIE Meaning Non- Change Proto- Germanic

Germanic Germanic Examples

Cognates

*bʰréh₂tēr brother Sanskrit: *bʰ > b *brōþēr English: brother,

bhrātṛ [b]/[β] German: Bruder

*sengʷʰ- Sing Homeric *gʷʰ > gw *singwaną English: sing,

Greek: ὀμφή [ɡʷ] German: singen

(omphē)

*gʷʰermós Warm Sanskrit: *gʷʰ > gw > *warmaz English: warm,

gharmá- {b, g w} German: warm

Each phase involves one single change which applies equally to the labials (b, bʰ) and their

equivalent dentals (t, d, dʰ, þ), velars (k, g, gʰ, h) and rounded velars (gʷ, gʷʰ). The first phase left

the phoneme repertoire of the language without voiceless stops, the second phase filled this gap,

but created a new one, and so on until the chain had run its course.
LEE CHING SIEW TEC150004 ADRIAN LIM JIN HONG TEG140001
GOH KEE HANG TEC140009 WONG CHIN WEE TEN150008

3.0 IMPACT TO THE LINGUISTICS DEVELOPMENT

Jacob Grimm discovered a series of distinctive and related sound changes involving certain

Indo-European consonants, which was known as Grimm’s Law (Schendl, 2001). This was a big

discovery, saying that there might be some kind of genetic relationships between Germanic

languages, such as English, Frisian, Dutch et cetera. This had started a new method in historical

linguistic study, that is comparative reconstruction using comparative method.

While all the Germanic languages descended from Proto-Germanic, started out as regional

dialects of Proto-Germanic (Trask, 1998), Proto-Germanic was spoken around 500 BC. It is

possible that there are more stages during the development before it became modern languages.

Furthermore, within Germanic languages, there are some languages that were not closely related

or even totally different from others. Thus, to explain this situation, the tree model had been

introduced by August Schleicher. The tree model illustrated genetic relation of Indo-European

languages including Proto-Germanic. By looking at shared innovations of languages, the

languages are grouped into different families that share a common ancestor (Trask, 1998). This

tree model was adopted by the historical linguists and helped them to classify 6000 living

languages and some recorded dead languages into genetic families (Trask, 1998).
 LEE CHING SIEW TEC150004 ADRIAN LIM JIN HONG TEG140001
GOH KEE HANG TEC140009 WONG CHIN WEE TEN150008

As a supplement to Schleicher’s tree model, Johannes Schmidt, a student of Schleicher had

introduced wave theory, which shows the occurring and disappearing of language changes (Trask,

1998). The wave model are considered as complementing tree model since the tree model represent

the genealogical relations between separate languages whereas waves theory would only be

concerned with the complex relations between dialects within the boundaries of each language

(Francois, 2014). Therefore, wave theory are favored by dialectologists in observing the fine-

grained distribution of linguistic features in space.

References

Francois, A. (2014). Trees, Waves and Linkages: Models of Language Diversification. In C.

Bowern, & B. Evans, The Routledge Handbook of Historical Linguistics, Routledge (pp.

161 - 189). Oxford: Routledge.

Matasovic, R. (n.d.). Comparative and Historical Linguistics. Retrieved from UNESCO-EOLSS:

http://www.eolss.net/sample-chapters/c04/e6-20b-05-00.pdf

Rytting, A. (1998). The Student’s Guide to Indo-European. Retrieved from Brigham Young

University: http://linguistics.byu.edu/classes/ling450ch/reports/indo-european.html

Schendl, H. (2001). Historical Linguistics. New York: Oxford University Press.

Trask, R. L. (1998). Historical Linguistics. New York: Oxford University Press.

View publication stats