Language and the Lexicon by Singleton David;

Author:Singleton, David;
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 4524521
Publisher: Routledge

8.2 The comparative method and internal reconstruction

The comparative method has its origins in the event which launched historical linguistics, namely the beginning of the serious study of ancient Indian language of Sanskrit by Western scholars at the end of the eighteenth century – in the wake of French and British colonization of India. A number of European visitors to India had in earlier times noticed similarities between Sanskrit words and words in European languages, but in 1786 Sir William Jones of the East India Company read a paper to the Royal Asiatic Society in Calcutta in which he provided persuasive evidence and arguments in favour of the notion that Sanskrit was related to Latin and Greek and also suggested that it might be linked to the Germanic languages and the Celtic languages.

Essentially, what Jones did intuitively – noticing resemblances between languages and positing a common source on the basis of such resemblances – the comparative method does systematically. The method can be illustrated by reference to some data from three Romance languages, Spanish, Italian and French:

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