Comparative method
In
The comparative method emerged in the early 19th century with the birth of
In the present work an attempt is made to set forth the inferred Indo-European original language side by side with its really existent derived languages. Besides the advantages offered by such a plan, in setting immediately before the eyes of the student the final results of the investigation in a more concrete form, and thereby rendering easier his insight into the nature of particular Indo-European languages, there is, I think, another of no less importance gained by it, namely that it shows the baselessness of the assumption that the non-Indian Indo-European languages were derived from Old-Indian (Sanskrit).
Definition
Principles
The aim of the comparative method is to highlight and interpret systematic phonological and semantic correspondences between two or more attested languages. If those correspondences cannot be rationally explained as the result of linguistic universals or language contact (borrowings, areal influence, etc.), and if they are sufficiently numerous, regular, and systematic that they cannot be dismissed as chance similarities, then it must be assumed that they descend from a single parent language called the 'proto-language'.[5][6]
A sequence of regular sound changes (along with their underlying sound laws) can then be postulated to explain the correspondences between the attested forms, which eventually allows for the reconstruction of a proto-language by the methodical comparison of "linguistic facts" within a generalized system of correspondences.[7]
Every linguistic fact is part of a whole in which everything is connected to everything else. One detail must not be linked to another detail, but one linguistic system to another.
— Antoine Meillet, La méthode comparative en linguistique historique, 1966 [1925], pp. 12–13.
Relation is considered to be "established beyond a reasonable doubt" if a reconstruction of the common ancestor is feasible.[8]
The ultimate proof of genetic relationship, and to many linguists' minds the only real proof, lies in a successful reconstruction of the ancestral forms from which the semantically corresponding cognates can be derived.
— Hans Henrich Hock, Principles of Historical Linguistics, 1991, p. 567.
In some cases, this reconstruction can only be partial, generally because the compared languages are too scarcely attested, the temporal distance between them and their proto-language is too deep, or their internal evolution render many of the sound laws obscure to researchers. In such case, a relation is considered plausible, but uncertain.[9]
Terminology
Descent is defined as transmission across the generations: children learn a language from the parents' generation and, after being influenced by their peers, transmit it to the next generation, and so on. For example, a continuous chain of speakers across the centuries links Vulgar Latin to all of its modern descendants.
Two languages are
However, it is possible for languages to have different degrees of relatedness.
The division of related languages into subgroups is accomplished by finding shared linguistic innovations that differentiate them from the parent language. For instance, English and German both exhibit the effects of a collection of sound changes known as
Origin and development
In classical antiquity, Romans were aware of the similarities between Greek and Latin, but did not study them systematically. They sometimes explained them mythologically, as the result of Rome being a Greek colony speaking a debased dialect.[14]
Even though grammarians of Antiquity had access to other languages around them (
Early works
In the 9th or 10th century AD,
In publications of 1647 and 1654,
Another early systematic attempt to prove the relationship between two languages on the basis of similarity of
Comparative linguistics
The comparative method developed out of attempts to reconstruct the proto-language mentioned by Jones, which he did not name but subsequent linguists have labelled
Both Rask and Grimm were unable to explain apparent exceptions to the sound laws that they had discovered. Although Hermann Grassmann explained one of the anomalies with the publication of Grassmann's law in 1862,[23] Karl Verner made a methodological breakthrough in 1875, when he identified a pattern now known as Verner's law, the first sound-law based on comparative evidence showing that a phonological change in one phoneme could depend on other factors within the same word (such as neighbouring phonemes and the position of the accent[24]), which are now called conditioning environments.
Neo-grammarian approach
Similar discoveries made by the Junggrammatiker (usually translated as "
Application
There is no fixed set of steps to be followed in the application of the comparative method, but some steps are suggested by Lyle Campbell[25] and Terry Crowley,[26] who are both authors of introductory texts in historical linguistics. This abbreviated summary is based on their concepts of how to proceed.
Step 1, assemble potential cognate lists
This step involves making lists of words that are likely cognates among the languages being compared. If there is a regularly-recurring match between the phonetic structure of basic words with similar meanings, a genetic kinship can probably then be established.[27] For example, linguists looking at the Polynesian family might come up with a list similar to the following (their actual list would be much longer):[28]
Gloss | one | two | three | four | five | man | sea | taboo | octopus | canoe | enter |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Tongan | taha | ua | tolu | fā | nima | taŋata | tahi | tapu | feke | vaka | hū |
Samoan | tasi | lua | tolu | fā | lima | taŋata | tai | tapu | feʔe | vaʔa | ulu |
Māori | tahi | rua | toru | ɸā | rima | taŋata | tai | tapu | ɸeke | waka | uru |
Rapanui
|
-tahi | -rua | -toru | -ha | -rima | taŋata | tai | tapu | heke | vaka | uru |
Rarotongan
|
taʔi | rua | toru | ʔā | rima | taŋata | tai | tapu | ʔeke | vaka | uru |
Hawaiian | kahi | lua | kolu | hā | lima | kanaka | kai | kapu | heʔe | waʔa | ulu |
Step 2, establish correspondence sets
The next step involves determining the regular sound-correspondences exhibited by the lists of potential cognates. For example, in the Polynesian data above, it is apparent that words that contain t in most of the languages listed have cognates in Hawaiian with k in the same position. That is visible in multiple cognate sets: the words glossed as 'one', 'three', 'man' and 'taboo' all show the relationship. The situation is called a "regular correspondence" between k in Hawaiian and t in the other Polynesian languages. Similarly, a regular correspondence can be seen between Hawaiian and Rapanui h, Tongan and Samoan f, Maori ɸ, and Rarotongan ʔ.
Mere phonetic similarity, as between English day and Latin dies (both with the same meaning), has no probative value.[37] English initial d- does not regularly match Latin d-[38] since a large set of English and Latin non-borrowed cognates cannot be assembled such that English d repeatedly and consistently corresponds to Latin d at the beginning of a word, and whatever sporadic matches can be observed are due either to chance (as in the above example) or to borrowing (for example, Latin diabolus and English devil, both ultimately of Greek origin[39]). However, English and Latin exhibit a regular correspondence of t- : d-[38] (in which "A : B" means "A corresponds to B"), as in the following examples:[40]
English | ten | two | tow | tongue | tooth |
Latin | decem | duo | dūco | dingua | dent- |
If there are many regular correspondence sets of this kind (the more, the better), a common origin becomes a virtual certainty, particularly if some of the correspondences are non-trivial or unusual.[27]
Step 3, discover which sets are in complementary distribution
During the late 18th to late 19th century, two major developments improved the method's effectiveness.
First, it was found that many sound changes are conditioned by a specific context. For example, in both
in 1863.Second, it was found that sometimes sound changes occurred in contexts that were later lost. For instance, in Sanskrit velars (k-like sounds) were replaced by palatals (ch-like sounds) whenever the following vowel was *i or *e.[43] Subsequent to this change, all instances of *e were replaced by a.[44] The situation could be reconstructed only because the original distribution of e and a could be recovered from the evidence of other Indo-European languages.[45] For instance, the Latin suffix que, "and", preserves the original *e vowel that caused the consonant shift in Sanskrit:
1. | *ke | Pre-Sanskrit "and" |
2. | *ce | Velars replaced by palatals before *i and *e |
3. | ca | The attested Sanskrit form: *e has become a |
This stage of the comparative method, therefore, involves examining the correspondence sets discovered in step 2 and seeing which of them apply only in certain contexts. If two (or more) sets apply in complementary distribution, they can be assumed to reflect a single original phoneme: "some sound changes, particularly conditioned sound changes, can result in a proto-sound being associated with more than one correspondence set".[47]
For example, the following potential cognate list can be established for Romance languages, which descend from Latin:
Italian | Spanish | Portuguese | French | Gloss | |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
1. | corpo | cuerpo | corpo | corps | body |
2. | crudo | crudo | cru | cru | raw |
3. | catena | cadena | cadeia | chaîne | chain |
4. | cacciare | cazar | caçar | chasser | to hunt |
They evidence two correspondence sets, k : k and k : ʃ:
Italian | Spanish | Portuguese | French | |
---|---|---|---|---|
1. | k | k | k | k |
2. | k | k | k | ʃ |
Since French ʃ occurs only before a where the other languages also have a, and French k occurs elsewhere, the difference is caused by different environments (being before a conditions the change), and the sets are complementary. They can, therefore, be assumed to reflect a single proto-phoneme (in this case *k, spelled ⟨c⟩ in
A more complex case involves consonant clusters in
Ojibwe
|
Meskwaki | Plains Cree | Menomini | |
---|---|---|---|---|
1. | kk | hk | hk | hk |
2. | kk | hk | sk | hk |
3. | sk | hk | sk | t͡ʃk |
4. | ʃk | ʃk | sk | sk |
5. | sk | ʃk | hk | hk |
Although all five correspondence sets overlap with one another in various places, they are not in complementary distribution and so Bloomfield recognised that a different cluster must be reconstructed for each set. His reconstructions were, respectively, *hk, *xk, *čk (=[t͡ʃk]), *šk (=[ʃk]), and çk (in which 'x' and 'ç' are arbitrary symbols, rather than attempts to guess the phonetic value of the proto-phonemes).[50]
Step 4, reconstruct proto-phonemes
Typology assists in deciding what reconstruction best fits the data. For example, the voicing of voiceless stops between vowels is common, but the devoicing of voiced stops in that environment is rare. If a correspondence -t- : -d- between vowels is found in two languages, the proto-phoneme is more likely to be *-t-, with a development to the voiced form in the second language. The opposite reconstruction would represent a rare type.
However, unusual sound changes occur. The
By the
Ojibwe
|
Míkmaq | Cree
|
Munsee | Blackfoot | Arapaho |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
m | m | m | m | m | b |
The simplest reconstruction for this set would be either *m or *b. Both *m → b and *b → m are likely. Because m occurs in five of the languages and b in only one of them, if *b is reconstructed, it is necessary to assume five separate changes of *b → m, but if *m is reconstructed, it is necessary to assume only one change of *m → b and so *m would be most economical.
That argument assumes the languages other than Arapaho to be at least partly independent of one another. If they all formed a common subgroup, the development *b → m would have to be assumed to have occurred only once.
Step 5, examine the reconstructed system typologically
In the final step, the linguist checks to see how the proto-phonemes fit the known typological constraints. For example, a hypothetical system,
p | t | k |
---|---|---|
b | ||
n | ŋ | |
l |
has only one
Even a symmetrical system can be typologically suspicious. For example, here is the traditional
Labials | Dentals | Velars | Labiovelars | Palatovelars
| |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
Voiceless
|
p | t | k | kʷ | kʲ |
Voiced
|
(b) | d | g | ɡʷ | ɡʲ |
aspirated
|
bʱ | dʱ | ɡʱ | ɡʷʱ | ɡʲʱ |
An earlier voiceless aspirated row was removed on grounds of insufficient evidence. Since the mid-20th century, a number of linguists have argued that this phonology is implausible[57] and that it is extremely unlikely for a language to have a voiced aspirated (breathy voice) series without a corresponding voiceless aspirated series.
The reconstruction of proto-sounds logically precedes the reconstruction of grammatical morphemes (word-forming affixes and inflectional endings), patterns of declension and conjugation and so on. The full reconstruction of an unrecorded protolanguage is an open-ended task.
Complications
The history of historical linguistics
The limitations of the comparative method were recognized by the very linguists who developed it,
The archaeologists followed suit and attempted to find archaeological evidence of a culture or cultures that could be presumed to have spoken a
The Comparative Method as such is not, in fact, historical; it provides evidence of linguistic relationships to which we may give a historical interpretation.... [Our increased knowledge about the historical processes involved] has probably made historical linguists less prone to equate the idealizations required by the method with historical reality.... Provided we keep [the interpretation of the results and the method itself] apart, the Comparative Method can continue to be used in the reconstruction of earlier stages of languages.
Proto-languages can be verified in many historical instances, such as Latin.
The Neogrammarian principle
The foundation of the comparative method, and of comparative linguistics in general, is the Neogrammarians' fundamental assumption that "sound laws have no exceptions". When it was initially proposed, critics of the Neogrammarians proposed an alternate position that summarised by the maxim "each word has its own history".[64] Several types of change actually alter words in irregular ways. Unless identified, they may hide or distort laws and cause false perceptions of relationship.
Borrowing
All languages borrow words from other languages in various contexts. Loanwords imitate the form of the donor language, as in Finnic kuningas, from Proto-Germanic *kuningaz ('king'), with possible adaptations to the local phonology, as in Japanese sakkā, from English soccer. At first sight, borrowed words may mislead the investigator into seeing a genetic relationship, although they can more easily be identified with information on the historical stages of both the donor and receiver languages. Inherently, words that were borrowed from a common source (such as English coffee and Basque kafe, ultimately from Arabic qahwah) do share a genetic relationship, although limited to the history of this word.
Areal diffusion
Borrowing on a larger scale occurs in
Several areal features and other influences may converge to form a Sprachbund, a wider region sharing features that appear to be related but are diffusional. For instance, the Mainland Southeast Asia linguistic area, before it was recognised, suggested several false classifications of such languages as Chinese, Thai and Vietnamese.
Random mutations
Sporadic changes, such as irregular inflections, compounding and abbreviation, do not follow any laws. For example, the Spanish words palabra ('word'), peligro ('danger') and milagro ('miracle') would have been parabla, periglo, miraglo by regular sound changes from the Latin parabŏla, perīcŭlum and mīrācŭlum, but the r and l changed places by sporadic metathesis.[66]
Analogy
Gradual application
Those who study contemporary language changes, such as William Labov, acknowledge that even a systematic sound change is applied at first inconsistently, with the percentage of its occurrence in a person's speech dependent on various social factors.[68] The sound change seems to gradually spread in a process known as lexical diffusion. While it does not invalidate the Neogrammarians' axiom that "sound laws have no exceptions", the gradual application of the very sound laws shows that they do not always apply to all lexical items at the same time. Hock notes,[69] "While it probably is true in the long run every word has its own history, it is not justified to conclude as some linguists have, that therefore the Neogrammarian position on the nature of linguistic change is falsified".
Non-inherited features
The comparative method cannot recover aspects of a language that were not inherited in its daughter idioms. For instance, the Latin declension pattern was lost in Romance languages, resulting in an impossibility to fully reconstruct such a feature via systematic comparison.[70]
The tree model
The comparative method is used to construct a tree model (German Stammbaum) of language evolution,
The presumption of a well-defined node
The tree model features nodes that are presumed to be distinct proto-languages existing independently in distinct regions during distinct historical times. The reconstruction of unattested proto-languages lends itself to that illusion since they cannot be verified, and the linguist is free to select whatever definite times and places seems best. Right from the outset of Indo-European studies, however, Thomas Young said:[74]
It is not, however, very easy to say what the definition should be that should constitute a separate language, but it seems most natural to call those languages distinct, of which the one cannot be understood by common persons in the habit of speaking the other.... Still, however, it may remain doubtfull whether the Danes and the Swedes could not, in general, understand each other tolerably well... nor is it possible to say if the twenty ways of pronouncing the sounds, belonging to the Chinese characters, ought or ought not to be considered as so many languages or dialects.... But,... the languages so nearly allied must stand next to each other in a systematic order…
The assumption of uniformity in a proto-language, implicit in the comparative method, is problematic. Even small language communities always have differences in dialect, whether they are based on area, gender, class or other factors. The Pirahã language of Brazil is spoken by only several hundred people but has at least two different dialects, one spoken by men and one by women.[75] Campbell points out:[76]
It is not so much that the comparative method 'assumes' no variation; rather, it is just that there is nothing built into the comparative method which would allow it to address variation directly.... This assumption of uniformity is a reasonable idealization; it does no more damage to the understanding of the language than, say, modern reference grammars do which concentrate on a language's general structure, typically leaving out consideration of regional or social variation.
Different dialects, as they evolve into separate languages, remain in contact with and influence one another. Even after they are considered distinct, languages near one another continue to influence one another and often share grammatical, phonological, and lexical innovations. A change in one language of a family may spread to neighboring languages, and multiple waves of change are communicated like waves across language and dialect boundaries, each with its own randomly delimited range.[77] If a language is divided into an inventory of features, each with its own time and range (isoglosses), they do not all coincide. History and prehistory may not offer a time and place for a distinct coincidence, as may be the case for Proto-Italic, for which the proto-language is only a concept. However, Hock[78] observes:
The discovery in the late nineteenth century that isoglosses can cut across well-established linguistic boundaries at first created considerable attention and controversy. And it became fashionable to oppose a wave theory to a tree theory.... Today, however, it is quite evident that the phenomena referred to by these two terms are complementary aspects of linguistic change....
Subjectivity of the reconstruction
The reconstruction of unknown proto-languages is inherently subjective. In the
Examples of strikingly complicated and even circular developments are indeed known to have occurred (such as Proto-Indo-European *t > Pre-Proto-Germanic *þ >
The existence of proto-languages and the validity of the comparative method is verifiable if the reconstruction can be matched to a known language, which may be known only as a shadow in the
Additional models
The wave model was developed in the 1870s as an alternative to the tree model to represent the historical patterns of language diversification. Both the tree-based and the wave-based representations are compatible with the comparative method.[80]
By contrast, some approaches are incompatible with the comparative method, including contentious
See also
Notes
- ^ Lehmann 1993, pp. 31 ff.
- ^ a b Szemerényi 1996, p. 21.
- ^ Lehmann 1993, p. 26.
- ^ Schleicher 1874, p. 8.
- ^ Meillet 1966, pp. 2–7, 22.
- ISBN 978-1-4443-5968-8.
- ^ Meillet 1966, pp. 12–13.
- ^ Hock 1991, p. 567.
- S2CID 122591029.
- ^ Lyovin 1997, pp. 1–2.
- ^ Beekes 1995, p. 25.
- ^ Campbell 2000, p. 1341
- ^ Beekes 1995, pp. 22, 27–29.
- JSTOR 30038039.
- ^ "The reason for this similarity and the cause of this intermixture was their close neighboring in the land and their genealogical closeness, since Terah the father of Abraham was Syrian, and Laban was Syrian. Ishmael and Kedar were Arabized from the Time of Division, the time of the confounding [of tongues] at Babel, and Abraham and Isaac and Jacob (peace be upon them) retained the Holy Tongue from the original Adam." Introduction of Risalat Yehuda Ibn Quraysh – مقدمة رسالة يهوذا بن قريش Archived 29 July 2009 at the Wayback Machine
- ^ a b George van Driem The genesis of polyphyletic linguistics Archived 26 July 2011 at the Wayback Machine
- ^ a b Szemerényi 1996, p. 6.
- ^ Jones, Sir William. Abbattista, Guido (ed.). "The Third Anniversary Discourse delivered 2 February 1786 By the President [on the Hindus]". Eliohs Electronic Library of Historiography. Retrieved 18 December 2009.
- ^ Szemerényi 1996, pp. 5–6
- ^ Szemerényi 1996, p. 7
- ^ Szemerényi 1996, p. 17
- ^ Szemerényi 1996, pp. 7–8.
- ^ Szemerényi 1996, p. 19.
- ^ Szemerényi 1996, p. 20.
- ^ Campbell 2004, pp. 126–147
- ^ Crowley 1992, pp. 108–109
- ^ a b Lyovin 1997, pp. 2–3.
- ^ This table is modified from Campbell 2004, pp. 168–169 and Crowley 1992, pp. 88–89 using sources such as Churchward 1959 for Tongan, and Pukui 1986 for Hawaiian.
- ^ Lyovin 1997, pp. 3–5.
- ^ "Taboo". Dictionary.com.
- ^ Lyovin 1997, p. 3.
- ^ Campbell 2004, pp. 65, 300.
- ^ "They". Dictionary.com.
- S2CID 15798043. Archived from the original(PDF) on 4 June 2011.
- ^ Thomason 2005, pp. 8–12 in pdf; Aikhenvald 1999, p. 355.
- ^ "Superficially, however, the Piraha pronouns don't look much like the Tupi–Guarani pronouns; so this proposal will not be convincing without some additional information about the phonology of Piraha that shows how the phonetic realizations of the Tupi–Guarani forms align with the Piraha phonemic system." "Pronoun borrowing" Sarah G. Thomason & Daniel L. Everett University of Michigan & University of Manchester
- ^ a b Lyovin 1997, p. 2.
- ^ a b Beekes 1995, p. 127
- ^ "devil". Dictionary.com.
- ^ In Latin, ⟨c⟩ represents /k/; dingua is an Old Latin form of the word later attested as lingua ("tongue").
- ^ Beekes 1995, p. 128.
- ^ Sag 1974, p. 591; Janda 1989.
- ^ The asterisk (*) indicates that the sound is inferred/reconstructed, rather than historically documented or attested
- ^ More accurately, earlier *e, *o, and *a merged as a.
- ^ Beekes 1995, pp. 60–61.
- ^ Beekes 1995, pp. 130–131.
- ^ Campbell 2004, p. 136.
- ^ Campbell 2004, p. 26.
- ^ The table is modified from that in Campbell 2004, p. 141.
- ^ Bloomfield 1925.
- ^ Szemerényi 1996, p. 28; citing Szemerényi 1960, p. 96.
- ^ Campbell 1997, p. 113.
- ^ Redish, Laura; Lewis, Orrin (1998–2009). "Vocabulary Words in the Algonquian Language Family". Native Languages of the Americas. Retrieved 20 December 2009.
- ^ Goddard 1974.
- S2CID 247211541.
- ^ Beekes 1995, p. 124.
- ^ Szemerényi 1996, p. 143.
- ^ Beekes 1995, pp. 109–113.
- ^ Szemerényi 1996, pp. 151–152.
- ^ Lyovin 1997, pp. 4–5, 7–8.
- ^ Fox 1995, pp. 141–2.
- OCLC 697534924.
- OCLC 742367480.
- ^ Szemerényi 1996, p. 23.
- ^ Aikhenvald 2001, pp. 2–3.
- ^ Campbell 2004, p. 39.
- ^ Beekes 1995, p. 79.
- ^ Beekes 1995, p. 55; Szemerényi 1996, p. 3.
- ^ Hock 1991, pp. 446–447.
- ^ Meillet 1966, p. 13.
- ^ Lyovin 1997, pp. 7–8.
- ^ The diagram is based on the hierarchical list in Mithun 1999, pp. 539–540 and on the map in Campbell 1997, p. 358.
- ^ This diagram is based partly on the one found in Fox 1995:128, and Johannes Schmidt, 1872. Die Verwandtschaftsverhältnisse der indogermanischen Sprachen. Weimar: H. Böhlau
- ^ Young, Thomas (1855), "Languages, From the Supplement to the Encyclopædia Britannica, vol. V, 1824", in Leitch, John (ed.), Miscellaneous works of the late Thomas Young, vol. III, Hieroglyphical Essays and Correspondence, &c., London: John Murray, p. 480
- ^ Aikhenvald 1999, p. 354; Ladefoged 2003, p. 14.
- ^ Campbell 2004, pp. 146–147
- ^ Fox 1995, p. 129
- ^ Hock 1991, p. 454.
- ^ Kylstra 1996, p. 62 for KAUNIS, p. 122 for KUNINGAS.
- ^ François 2014, Kalyan & François 2018.
- ^ Campbell 2004, p. 201; Lyovin 1997, p. 8.
References
- ISBN 978-0-521-57021-3.
- Aikhenvald, Alexandra Y.; Dixon, R. M. W. (2001), "Introduction", in Dixon, R. M. W.; Aikhenvald, Alexandra Y. (eds.), Areal Diffusion and Genetic Inheritance: Problems in Comparative Linguistics, Oxford Linguistics, Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 1–22.
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- JSTOR 409540.
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- Kalyan, Siva; François, Alexandre (2018), "Freeing the Comparative Method from the tree model: A framework for Historical Glottometry" (PDF), in Kikusawa, Ritsuko; Reid, Laurie (eds.), Let's Talk about Trees: Genetic Relationships of Languages and Their Phylogenic Representation, Senri Ethnological Studies, 98, Ōsaka: National Museum of Ethnology, pp. 59–89, archived (PDF) from the original on 29 September 2022.
- Kylstra, A. D.; Sirkka-Liisa, Hahmo; Hofstra, Tette; Nikkilä, Osmo (1996). Lexikon der älteren germanischen Lehnwörter in den ostseefinnischen Sprachen (in German). Vol. Band II: K-O. Amsterdam, Atlanta: Rodopi B.V.
- Labov, William (2007). "Transmission and diffusion" (PDF). Language. 83 (2): 344–387. (PDF) from the original on 21 September 2017.
- Ladefoged, Peter (2003). Phonetic Data Analysis: An Introduction to Fieldwork and Instrumental Techniques. Oxford: Blackwell.
- ISBN 9780415082013.
- Lyovin, Anatole V. (1997). An Introduction to the Languages of the World. New York: Oxford University Press, Inc. ISBN 978-0-19-508116-9.
- Meillet, Antoine (1966) [1925]. La Méthode Comparative en Linguistique. Honoré Champion.
- Mithun, Marianne (1999). The Languages of Native North America. Cambridge Language Surveys. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
- Pukui, Mary Kawena; Elbert, Samuel H. (1986). Hawaiian Dictionary. Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press. ISBN 978-0-8248-0703-0.
- JSTOR 4177844.
- Schleicher, August (1874–1877) [1871]. A Compendium of the Comparative Grammar of the Indo-European, Sanskrit, Greek, and Latin Languages, translated from the third German edition. Translated by Bendall, Herbert. London: Trübner and Co.
- Szemerényi, Oswald J. L. (1960). Studies in the Indo-European System of Numerals. Heidelberg: C. Winter.
- Szemerényi, Oswald J. L. (1996). Introduction to Indo-European Linguistics (4th ed.). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
- Thomason, Sarah G.; Everett, Daniel L. (2005). "Pronoun Borrowing". Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Berkeley Linguistics Society. 27: 301 ff. .
- Trask, R. L. (1996). Historical Linguistics. New York: Oxford University Press.
- Zuckermann, Ghil'ad (2009). "Hybridity versus Revivability: Multiple Causation, Forms and Patterns" (PDF). Journal of Language Contact – Varia. 2 (2): 40–67. (PDF) from the original on 9 May 2008.
External links
- Hubbard, Kathleen. "Everything you ever wanted to know about Proto-Indo-European (and the comparative method), but were afraid to ask!". University of Texas Department of Classics. Archived from the original on 5 October 2009. Retrieved 22 December 2009.
- Gordon, Matthew. "Week 3:Comparative method and linguistic reconstruction" (PDF). Department of Linguistics, University of California, Santa Barbara. Archived from the original (PDF) on 17 December 2008. Retrieved 22 December 2009.