Comparative-historical method in linguistics
The historical method of cognition includes different types. With the help of various methods, the cognition of phenomena to one degree or another is realized.
A comparative-historical method is a scientificA method, using which determine the "general" and "special" in phenomena. With the help of him, different stages of development of two different or the same phenomena are known.
Comparative-historical method makes it possible to identify and compare the changes that have occurred in the development of the object of study, as well as determine the direction of further progress.
Experts classify several subspeciesthis way of knowing. Thus, there is a comparative-comparative method (revealing the nature of objects), a historical-typological (explaining the similarity of phenomena unrelated in origin from the point of view of conditions of development and genesis), historical-genetic (studying and determining similarity on the basis of kinship by descent). There is also a way of knowing, in which the mutual influences of different phenomena are evaluated.
The comparative-historical method isa set of techniques by which to prove the affinity of certain languages and restore facts from the history of their development. This method of cognition was created in the 19th century. Its founders are outstanding scientists (Alexander Vostokov, Jacob Grimm, Franz Bopp, Rasmus Raek).
In some languages, similarthe words. This is due to borrowing. There are also those who rarely go from one language to another. They include, for example, adjectives, which denote the simplest signs, names of body parts and so on. The endings of declined and conjugated words from one language to another do not pass. However, they are often similar. According to the researchers, the reason is that these endings are the result of the development of one particular word, and the languages in which they exist are descendants of one "proto-language".
The comparative-historical method includes several methods of investigation.
Reception of external reconstruction is often used. It is the identification of genetically identical words and morphemes in related languages. In this case, they reveal the results of regular changes in the sounds of the original language. In addition, a method is used to construct a hypothetical model of the proto-language and the rules for the derivation of certain morphemes in descendants. When a sufficiently large number of related morphemes are preserved and the phonetic history of descendants is not very complicated, the results of sound changes act as correspondences between related languages. In another case, the detection of sound changes is possible only with the reconstruction of intermediate stages of development. At the same time, the proto-languages of groups and subgroups in the family of languages are explored.
Internal reception is also used. In this case, in the structure of a specific language, the relationships and phenomena that unequivocally testify to the fact that there are certain components of the system at an early stage of its development are revealed.
There is a method of comparative analysis of loan words.
In some cases, researchers extractinformation from the toponymy data. The resulting reconstruction concerns all aspects of the language system: morphology, phonology, vocabulary, morphology, syntax (to some extent). Along with this, the models obtained can not be identified directly with the actual proto-language. Educated reconstructions reflect only information about it, which will inevitably be incomplete, due to the inability to recreate phonemic oppositions, roots, etc., which have disappeared in all subsequent languages.
