Development of Linguistics with the half of the historical comparative methods

There are many languages on the earth, both great and small. According to modern calculations, the number of living languages exceeds 2500. Along­side of highly developed national languages with ancient writing and literature, there are languages having no writing and no recorded history: there belong the spoken languages of tribes and small nationalities in America, Asia, Africa. Australia. Many of the spoken languages are dying out together with their peo­ples— due to the miserable condition they have been reduced to by the 'higher European civilisation', as is the case with the aboriginal Indian tribes in Amer­ica or Australia. On the other hand, the number of known languages is still growing as new languages and dialects come to be recorded and studied by sci­ence.

Observing the fact that some of the languages are very similar to one an­other in their forms, while others are quite dissimilar, scholars still long ago expressed the idea that languages revealing formal features of similarity have a common origin. Among the scholars who developed the idea of language relationship we find the names of the great German scientist G.W. Leibnitz, the great Russian scientist M. V. Lomonosov, the great Ukrainian scientists Karaban B.I. Korunets and others.

But a consistently scientific proof and study of the actual relationship be­tween languages become possible only when the historical comparative method of language study was created—in the first quarter of the 19^h century.

The historical comparative method developed in connection with the com­parative observation of languages belonging to the Indo-European family, and its appearance was stimulated by the discovery of Sanskrit.

Sir William Jones, a prominent British orientalist and Sanskrit scholar, was the first to point out that Sanskrit, Greek, Latin, Gothic, and some other languages of India and Europe had sprung from the same source which no longer existed. He put forward this hypothesis, basis his views on an observa­tion of verbal .roots and certain grammatical forms in the languages compared.

The relations between the languages of the Indo-European family were studied systematically and scientifically at the beginning of the 19^lh century by Franz Bopp, Rasmus Kristian Rask, Jacob Grimm, and A. Ch. Vostokov. These scientists not only made comparative historical observations of the kinder lan­guages, but they defined, the fundamental conception of linguistic 'relation­ship', and created the historical comparative method in linguistics. The rise of this method marks the appearance of linguistics as a science in the strict sense of the word.

After that historical and comparative study of the Indo-European lan­guages became the principal line of European linguistics.

The historical comparative method is used to analyse and discover the re­lationship of different languages and groups of languages, to reconstruct pre­historic lingual elements.

- to reveal the course of historical development of lingual elements in their com­plex interrelations; by means of the historical comparative method science col­lects materials for studying general laws of language development.

The following general conceptions of different aspects of language and its development underlie the foundations of the historical comparative method:

- families of languages originate due to historical division of languages:

- lingual signs are arbitrary in the sense that there is no natural connection between their form and the things or ideas they signify:

- the historical development of language is continual, but uneven. We shall consider these funda­mental conceptions and their consequences separately.

- The historical comparative method proceeds from the possibility for different languages to have been originated from the same source .The division of one language into two or more languages is brought about by the division of the language-speaking community due to political and economic factors. Since language is always changing historically, the isolation of daughter communities can lead to the growing differences in their language, to the rise of dialects, which, in the process of further change, can develop into totally different lan­guages.

Such division of languages is characteristic of the tribal epoch in the his­tory of peoples. The actual process of language division is very complex. It is connected with repeated mixings, crossings, and accompanied by the dis­appearance of some languages, and the spread of other languages over vast ter­ritories and among originally unrelated communities. One thing, is absolutely straightforward: when the dialects of a language grow into different languages, it means that the parent language has ceased to exist: in its stead a family of languages has arisen. Thus, in the family forming linguistic process we register several stages of differentiation corresponding to the existence of several suc­cessive parent languages: the parent language of a family and the intermediary parent languages of further groups and subgroups within the family.

- The actual kinship, or non-kinship of different languages is revealed on the basis of systematic comparison of their forms: since there is no naturally predetermined connection "between lingual forms and the things or ideas they signify. Occasionally resemblance in meaningful forms is purely coincidental.

Other resemblances may be due to the borrowing of words from one language to another, and therefore bear no evidence as to the actual kinship of the languages. E.g. the Georgian [aritmetika] is similar in form and in meaning to the Russian "арифметика", the English "arithmetic", the French "arithmetique",etc., by virtue of the fact that the word is borrowed from Ancient Greek (Gr. "arithmetike").

However, there are such features of resemblance between languages that clearly prove their common origin. These features belong to the most stable component parts of language—to the basic word stock and, above all, to the fund of grammatical affixes, because grammatical forms, as a rule, are never borrowed by one language from another.

Let's compare the native words of Indo-European languages that evi­dence their kinship:

Let’s compare the finite forms of verbs

By comparing forms in kindred languages, linguists reveal the system of phonetical correspondences characterizing one language or group of languages within the family in reference to another language or group of languages.

For example, the Indo-European [p], [t], [k ] correspond to the Germanic [f], [ ], [x]; the Indo-European [b], [d], [g] correspond to the Germanic [p]. [t] [k]; the Indo-European [bh], [dh], [gh] correspond to the Germanic [b]. [d]. [g].

Such systems of correspondences are the final sign of language kinship, they show both differentiation and unity;

- Language develops unevenly. It concerns all the structural elements of language, and also different languages as compared to each other on the same chronological level. It is connected with the fact that different structural ele­ments of language specifically react to, and reflect, the history of the people. It follows from this that elements no longer existing in one language of a family may be preserved in another kindred language. Thus, comparing different lan­guages and their forms linguists can reconstruct prehistoric elements of lan­guages, and more rigorously formulate the historical changes in languages.

The historical comparative method has certain limitations.

1. It is limited by the material it can use. The facts that ceased to exist in all the compared group or family of languages can hardly be reconstructed.

2. Some common features of living kindred languages can be the product of further development; but in studying the languages comparatively there is a great danger of considering them as characteristics of the parent language.

3. It is difficult to define the time, and even the relative chronology of lingual changes.

4. The historical comparative method can be applied to languages with ancient writing.

5. It is applied only to the comparative study of kindred languages; but, to understand the nature of language, all languages must be studied in com­parison, not only kindred. Modern linguistics is developing the typological study of languages, both kindred and non-kindred.

However, these limitations of the historical comparative method cannot testify that the method is antiquated. The historical comparative method has it­self undergone a long history. The historical comparative study of languages in the 19^th century was still mixed with psychological and logical pre-conceived ideas. Towards the end of the 19^lh century it concentrated its attention on the history of separate lingual elements. Such approach to language was called "at­omistic". Modern linguistics is gradually overcoming this approach, perfecting its analytical and descriptive technique in historical studies. Alongside of the Indo-European family of languages, other families of related languages have been discovered and are being studied, such as the Finno-Ugrian family, the Turkish family, the Caucasian family, and others. Their study brings new scien­tific results, widening the horizon of the comparative linguistics and contribut­ing to its development.

II. Practical Task

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