LINGUISTIC LINEAGES: A CRITICAL ANALYSIS OF COMPARATIVE- HISTORICAL APPROACH TO STUDY LANGUAGE

Abstract

This article provides a theoretical overview of the historical and comparative methods in linguistics. These methods have greatly shaped our comprehension of the relationships and evolution of languages. Comparing different languages to find systematic sound correspondences and reconstruct historical forms is the comparative method, while the historical method examines language change over time with a focus on the phonological, structural, syntactic, and semantic variations. These techniques have proven crucial in grouping languages into populations like Uralic and Indo-European. The article opens up with outlining the evolution of these techniques throughout time, focusing the work of linguists who created empirical basis for historical linguistics, such as Franz Bopp, Jacob Grimm, and Rasmus Rask. It also takes into account how early linguistic methods were affected by positivism, evolutionary ideas, and language. The paper then examines the theoretical development such as the recovery of proto-languages and regular sound change similarly the disadvantages and limitations, say for example a high dependence on documents and European preconceptions. Despite these objections, the historical and comparative approaches are still essential to modern linguistics because they provide important insights into how languages have changed over time and how they relate to one another, particularly when coupled with more recent viewpoints like sociolinguistics and computer language science.