Faculty of Art

Third year

History of English language

CHAPTER 1

The Comparative method

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 Comparative method

● It Is the process of examining languages, grouping them into language

families and reconstructing ancestral languages "by showing the siblings
and parents"
● there are three kinds of evidence must be used to illustrate how this
method works:
Generally:
● 1-cognate vocabulary
● 2-grammatical similarities
● 3-historical/archeological information
In details:

1) Cognate vocabulary:
● Cognates are words that passed down through the family tree.
Examples:

Example 1:

● Watkins lists many semantic categories that were too important in

developing the Indo-European family for instance:
● Verbs such as: Be
● Adjectives such as: old, new, thin
● Seasons such as: winter, spring, summer, autumn
● Body parts such as: hands, nose, feet
Example 2:

● The modern English foot can be used in languages which belong to the
Indo-European language family

So the word foot is cognate one. As it's used as following:

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 B A
Modern French: pied Old English: Fot
Modern Italian: piede Modern English: foot
Modern Portuguese: pe Modern German: fub
Modern Spanish: pie Modern Dutch: voet
Sanskrit: pat Modern Norwegian: fot
Latin: pes Modern Danish: fod
Greek: peza Modern Swedish: fot

Illustration for the abovementioned table:

● The left column contain words from Germanic languages
● The right-hand column contains words from other Indo-European
languages "non Germanic family"
● We will find the Germanic family words for "foot" seem different from the
other languages in column "B"
● we can see all the Germanic words begin with orthographic /f/ even if the
Dutch example voet begins with orthographic /v/ but it's pronounced as /f/
● But in column "B" all the words begin with orthographic /P/
● So, here easily we can put the Germanic languages in a language family
that different from any other Indo-European families.

Cognate vocabulary and reconstruction:

● Cognate vocabulary can also be used to reconstruct ancestral languages.
● for instance the American heritage dictionary of Indo-European roots lists
the stem "ped" as the Indo-European word for modern English foot but
foot as the Germanic word
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 2) Grammatical similarities:

● Grammatical similarities among languages can provide additional evidence

that languages should be classified in similar or different languages families
Example:

● One among many grammatical features of many Indo-European languages

is that they contain inflection-s- marking case, number, and gender on
nouns, adjectives and articles
For the case:
● PIE "proto-Indo European" had eight cases:
1-nominative as subject

2-vocative

3-accusative as object

4-genitive

5-ablative

6-dative

7-locative

8-instrumental

● Modern German and Dutch:

● Some of Indo-European languages with fewer cases that PIE:
They have four cases which are:

1-nominative

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2-accusative

3-genitive

4-dative

● Latin has six cases which are:

1-modern German and Dutch's four cases

2-ablative

3-vocative

● Russian has six cases:

1-modren German and Dutch's four cases

2-instrumental

3-locative

Modern English has four cases:

A-one case on nouns:
1-the genitive

B-three cases on pronouns:

1-nominative Ex: i, he, she

2-accusative Ex: me, him, her

3-gentive Ex: my, his, her

For the number:

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 ● PIE distinguished three classes of number:
1-singular "one"

2-dual "two"

3-plural "more than two"

● Sanskrit has two classes of number:

1-singular "one"

2-plural"more than one"

For the gender:

● PIE such as German, polish, Russian, and Czech had three genders:
1-masculine

2-feminine

3-neuter

● Italic languages as French, Spanish, Portuguese and Italian have only two
gender:
1-masculine

2-feminine

● English has two genders such as:

1-masculine

2-feminine

● showing the distinguishing between Latin and modern English of case,

number and gender for the word girl:

English Latin
Case
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 Plural Singular Singular plural
Girl girls Puella puellae Nominative
Girl's girls' Puellae puellarum Genitive
Girl girls Puellae puellis Dative

3) Historical/archeological information:

● This one is non-linguistic evidence which help to classify languages

especially to help us to know the date and the origins of proto-languages
for which no linguistics evidence exists
● We know a little about either proto-Indo-European or Proto-Germanic
● We have no hard evidence about when and where these people lived.
● for this reason we can only guess when this languages might have initially
been spoken who spoke it and migrations of PIE speakers led to the
development of sub-families of PIE

● EX- Proto-Germanic

"When did the PIE begin?

According to historical/archeological information evidence there are many about

that hypothesis:

● -the first hypothesis:

The common consensus is that PIE began around 6,000 years ago

● -the second hypothesis:

PIE began "for Dixon" around 10,500 years ago

"Where was PIE initially spoken?

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There are many Hypothesis

● -the first hypothesis:

"Kurgan hypothesis places THAT :

● The original speakers of PIE just north of the black sea for 6,000 years ago
● Through a series of migrations, these speakers spread their languages all
the way to Europe, which developed over time to create sibling languages
of PIE including Proto-Germanic
● This hypothesis suggests that the PIE speakers were warriors who rode
their horses to Europe

● -the second hypothesis:

"Renfrew’s hypothesis"

It's contrary to kurgan's one it argued that the original speakers of PIE were not
warriors but farmers and the spread of farming from Anatolia "Turkey" to Greece
and eventually Europe was the responsible for the spread of PIE

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