Basic provisions and methods of comparative historical linguistics. Comparative historical method and linguistic processes of antiquity

Lecture, abstract. Comparative-historical linguistics: prerequisites for development, founders of the method. - concept and types. Classification, essence and features.

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The history of linguistics as a deepening and expansion of linguistic theory, methods of scientific and educational analysis of the language.
An early stage in the development of linguistics.
Comparative-historical linguistics: prerequisites for development, founders of the method.
The origin of comparative - historical linguistics in Russia.
Comparative-historical method of studying languages. Genealogical typology of world languages. Genealogical classification of languages
The emergence of theoretical (philosophical) linguistics. The concept of the language of W. Humboldt.
The development of comparative historical linguistics in the 19th century. Naturalistic direction in the science of language.
Neogrammatism as a linguistic school of the 19th century, its principles.
Kazan Linguistic School I.A.Baudouin de Courtenay, N.V.Krushevsky, V.A.Bogoroditsky.
Moscow Linguistic School. F.F. Fortunatov, A.A. Shakhmatov, A.A. Peshkovsky.
The linguistic concept of F. de Saussure and its influence on modern linguistics.
Structuralism as a leading trend in linguistics of the 20th century. Structural typology of languages.
Structural-typological classification of world languages ​​(morphological, syntactic).
Language as a system-structural formation. The symbolic nature of the language. Types of linguistic signs, their nature and interaction.
Language as a system of signs. iconic situation.
System-structural character of the language. Paradigmatics and syntagmatics of language units.
System-structural nature of the language. Oppositional relations of linguistic units and types of linguistic oppositions. Variation of language units.
Structural-semantic methods and techniques of language learning: distributive analysis, analysis by direct components, transformational, component.

Lecture number 10.

World Language Classifications

1. Genealogical classification

2. Typological classification:

a) morphological classification;

b) syntactic classification.

3. Functional (social) classification.

Genealogical classification

Modern linguistics is engaged not only in the study and description of the languages ​​of the world, but also in their classification, determining the place of each language among the languages ​​of the world. Language classification- this is the distribution of the languages ​​of the world into groups based on certain characteristics, in accordance with the principles underlying the study. There are various classifications of languages, among which the main ones are typological (morphological), genealogical and functional (social).

Language kinship

Genealogical classification is based on the concept of linguistic kinship. Language affinity- a common property of two or more languages, which consists in the fact that their original minimally significant elements (root morphemes and affixes) are in strictly defined correspondences, reflecting the regular nature of sound transformations, for example, the Latin combination [al] (al) passes in French words V [O] ( ai):

Late Latin French

Calce- lime chaux

malva- mallow mauve

saltare- jump sauter

Such languages, which, arising from the same source, reveal ancient common roots and affixes, regular phonetic correspondences, are called related languages. The group of related languages ​​forms language family(for example, the Slavic languages ​​are part of the Indo-European family). Indo-European family- one of the largest families of languages ​​of Eurasia. It includes more than ten groups of languages, among which are both living and dead languages.

Genealogical classification is usually depicted as family tree, for example, see diagram 1. In addition to the Indo-European, there are Altaic, Uralic and other language families.

Nostratic

Indo-European Altaic

Balto-Slavic Germanic Turkic

Slavic Baltic German English Turkish

East-sl. Lithuanian

Russian Mongolian Japanese

West.-sl. Yuzhno-Slav.

Polish Bulgarian

Within the same family, languages ​​are grouped and form groups or branches (for example, within the Indo-European family, Slavic, Romanesque, Germanic, Celtic, Baltic, and other groups are distinguished). The languages ​​of each group go back to their parent language. parent language- the language is the basis of the historical community of related languages ​​(for the Slavic languages ​​it is the Proto-Slavic language, for the Romance languages ​​it is folk Latin, etc.). When the group covers not two, but more languages, then these languages ​​are divided into subgroups(for example, the group of Slavic languages ​​is divided into three subgroups: West Slavic, East Slavic and South Slavic). The East Slavic subgroup includes Russian, Ukrainian and Belarusian.

Comparative-historical method of learning languages

Each family comes from divergent dialects of one parent language of this family. Dialect- a kind of language, limited territorially or socially. The parent language is usually restored by reconstruction, carried out using the comparative historical method.

Comparative historical the method involves comparing genetically identical words and forms of related languages ​​and restoring their original form. For the first time, the comparative historical method was applied at the beginning of the 19th century on the material of the Indo-European languages ​​by the German linguist Franz Bopp.

From the point of view of genealogy, languages ​​can be alive, i.e. active, and dead. Languages ​​that have fallen out of modern use are called dead(for example, Latin, Gaulish, Old Church Slavonic, Gothic). Many dead languages ​​and even entire language families have survived only in place names or as borrowings in other languages, while others have disappeared without a trace. However, some dead languages ​​are still used today (for example, Latin is the language of the Catholic Church, medicine, and scientific terminology).

Thus, genealogical classification- study and grouping of world languages ​​based on the definition of family ties between them. The overall picture of the genealogical classification of languages ​​is far from complete. It continues to evolve and refine.

Comparative - historical method.

Comparative-historical linguistics (linguistic comparative studies) is a field of linguistics devoted primarily to the relationship of languages, which is understood historically-genetically (as a fact of origin from a common proto-language). Comparative historical linguistics deals with establishing the degree of kinship between languages ​​(building a genealogical classification of languages), reconstructing proto-languages, studying diachronic processes in the history of languages, their groups and families, and etymology of words.

The "push" was the discovery of Sanskrit (Sanskrit - samskrta - in ancient Indian "processed", about the language - as opposed to prakrit - prakrta - "simple"), the literary language of ancient India. Why could this "discovery" play such a role? The fact is that both in the Middle Ages and in the Renaissance, India was considered a fabulous country full of miracles described in the old novel Alexandria. Travels to India by Marco Polo (XIII century), Athanasius Nikitin (XV century) and the descriptions they left did not dispel the legends about the "country of gold and white elephants".

The first to notice the similarity of Indian words with Italian and Latin was Philippe Sasseti, an Italian traveler of the 16th century, as he reported in his Letters from India, but no scientific conclusions were drawn from these publications.

The question was correctly posed only in the second half of the 18th century, when the Institute of Oriental Cultures was established in Calcutta and William Johns (1746–1794), having studied Sanskrit manuscripts and got acquainted with modern Indian languages, was able to write:

“The Sanskrit language, whatever its antiquity, has an amazing structure, more perfect than Greek, richer than Latin, and more beautiful than either of them, but bearing in itself such a close relationship with these two languages ​​as in roots of verbs, and in forms of grammar, which could not be generated by chance, the relationship is so strong that no philologist who would study these three languages ​​\u200b\u200bcan not believe that they all came from one common source, which, perhaps no longer exists. There is an analogous reason, though not so convincing, for supposing that both Gothic and Celtic, though mixed with quite different dialects, were of the same origin as Sanskrit; Ancient Persian could also be attributed to the same family of languages, if there were a place for discussing questions about Persian antiquities.

This laid the foundation for comparative linguistics, and the further development of science confirmed, although declarative, but correct statements of V. Jonze.

The main thing in his thoughts:

1) similarity not only in roots, but also in the forms of grammar cannot be the result of chance;

2) this is the kinship of languages ​​that go back to one common source;

3) this source, “perhaps no longer exists”;

4) in addition to Sanskrit, Greek and Latin, the Germanic, Celtic, and Iranian languages ​​also belong to the same family of languages.

At the beginning of the XIX century. Independently of each other, different scientists from different countries have been engaged in clarifying the relationship of languages ​​within a particular family and have achieved remarkable results.

Franz Bopp (1791–1867) went straight from the statement of W. Jonze and studied the conjugation of the main verbs in Sanskrit, Greek, Latin and Gothic (1816) using the comparative method, comparing both roots and inflections, which was methodologically especially important, since correspondences roots and words are not enough to establish the relationship of languages; if the material design of inflections provides the same reliable criterion of sound correspondences - which cannot be attributed to borrowing or chance, since the system of grammatical inflections, as a rule, cannot be borrowed - then this serves as a guarantee of a correct understanding of the relationships of related languages. Although Bopp believed at the beginning of his activity that Sanskrit was the "proto-language" for the Indo-European languages, and although he later tried to include such alien languages ​​\u200b\u200bin the kindred circle of Indo-European languages ​​\u200b\u200bsuch as Malay and Caucasian, but also with his first work, and later, drawing on data Iranian, Slavic, Baltic languages ​​and the Armenian language, Bopp proved the declarative thesis of V. Jonze on a large surveyed material and wrote the first "Comparative grammar of the Indo-Germanic [Indo-European] languages" (1833).

The Danish scientist Rasmus-Christian Rask (1787–1832), who was ahead of F. Bopp, followed a different path. Rask emphasized in every possible way that lexical correspondences between languages ​​are not reliable, grammatical correspondences are much more important, because borrowing inflections, and inflections in particular, "never happens."

Starting his research with the Icelandic language, Rusk first of all compared it with other "Atlantic" languages: Greenlandic, Basque, Celtic - and denied their relationship (regarding the Celtic, Rask later changed his mind). Rusk then matched Icelandic (1st circle) with the closely related Norwegian and got the 2nd circle; this second circle he compared with other Scandinavian (Swedish, Danish) languages ​​(3rd circle), then with other Germanic (4th circle), and, finally, he compared the Germanic circle with other similar "circles" in search of "Thracian "(i.e. Indo-European) circle, comparing the Germanic data with the indications of the Greek and Latin languages.

Unfortunately, Rusk was not attracted to Sanskrit even after he had been to Russia and India; this narrowed his "circles" and impoverished his conclusions.

However, the involvement of Slavic and, in particular, the Baltic languages ​​significantly made up for these shortcomings.

A. Meillet (1866–1936) characterizes the comparison of the thoughts of F. Bopp and R. Rask as follows:

“Rusk is significantly inferior to Bopp in that he does not attract Sanskrit; but he points to the original identity of the converging languages, without being carried away by vain attempts to explain the original forms; he is content, for example, with the assertion that "every end of the Icelandic language can be found more or less clearly in Greek and Latin", and in this respect his book is more scientific and less outdated than Bopp's writings. It should be pointed out that Rusk's work was published in 1818 in Danish and only in an abridged form was printed in German in 1822 (translated by I. S. Vater).

The third founder of the comparative method in linguistics was A. Kh. Vostokov (1781–1864).

Vostokov dealt only with the Slavic languages, and above all with the Old Church Slavonic language, whose place had to be determined in the circle of Slavic languages. Comparing the roots and grammatical forms of the living Slavic languages ​​with the data of the Old Slavonic language, Vostokov managed to unravel many incomprehensible facts of Old Slavonic written monuments before him. So, Vostokov is credited with unraveling the “mystery of the yus”, i.e. letters zh and a, which he defined as denoting nasal vowels, based on the comparison:

Vostokov was the first to point out the need to compare the data contained in the monuments of dead languages ​​with the facts of living languages ​​and dialects, which later became a prerequisite for the work of linguists in a comparative historical sense. This was a new word in the formation and development of the comparative historical method.

In addition, Vostokov, using the material of the Slavic languages, showed what the sound correspondences of related languages ​​are, such as the fate of the combinations tj, dj in the Slavic languages ​​(cf. swieca, Russian candle - from Common Slavic *svetja; and Old Slavonic mezhda, Bulgarian mezhda, Serbo-Croatian méђa, Czech mez, Polish miedw, Russian mezha - from Common Slavic *medza), corresponding to Russian full-vowel forms such as city, head (cf. Old Slavonic grad, Bulgarian grad, Serbo-Croatian city, Czech hrad - castle, kremlin, Polish grod - from Common Slavic *gordu, and Old Church Slavonic head, Bulgarian head, Serbo-Croatian head, Czech hiava, Polish gfowa - from Common Slavic *golva, etc.), as well as a method of reconstructing archetypes or proto-forms, i.e., original forms not attested by written monuments. Through the works of these scientists, the comparative method in linguistics was not only declared, but also shown in its methodology and technique.

Great merit in refining and strengthening this method on a large comparative material of the Indo-European languages ​​belongs to August Friedrich Pott (1802–1887), who gave comparative etymological tables of the Indo-European languages ​​and confirmed the importance of analyzing sound correspondences.

At this time, individual scientists describe in a new way the facts of certain related language groups and subgroups.

Such are the works of Johann-Caspar Zeiss (1806–1855) on the Celtic languages, Friedrich Dietz (1794–1876) on the Romance languages, Georg Curtius (1820–1885) on the Greek language, Jacob Grimm (1785–1868) on the Germanic languages, and in in particular in German, Theodor Benfey (1818–1881) in Sanskrit, Frantishek Miklosic (1818–1891) in Slavic languages, August Schleicher (1821–1868) in Baltic languages ​​and German, F.I. Buslaev (1818–1897) in Russian and others.

Of particular importance for the verification and approval of the comparative historical method were the works of the novelistic school of F. Dietz. Although the use of the method of comparison and reconstruction of archetypes has become commonplace among comparative linguists, skeptics were legitimately puzzled by not seeing the actual verification of the new method. Romance brought this test with its research. The Romano-Latin archetypes, restored by the school of F. Dietz, were confirmed by written facts in the publications of Vulgar (folk) Latin, the ancestral language of the Romance languages.

Thus, the reconstruction of the data obtained by the comparative historical method was proved in fact.

To complete an outline of the development of comparative historical linguistics, one should also cover the second half of the 19th century.

If in the first third of the XIX century. scientists who developed the comparative method, as a rule, proceeded from idealistic romantic premises (the brothers Friedrich and August-Wilhelm Schlegel, Jacob Grimm, Wilhelm Humboldt), then by the middle of the century natural-scientific materialism became the leading direction.

Under the pen of the largest linguist of the 50-60s. XIX century, naturalist and Darwinist August Schleicher (1821–1868), the allegorical and metaphorical expressions of the romantics: “the body of the language”, “youth, maturity and decline of the language”, “family of related languages” - acquire a direct meaning.

According to Schleicher, languages ​​are the same natural organisms as plants and animals, they are born, grow and die, they have the same pedigree and genealogy as all living beings. According to Schleicher, languages ​​do not develop, but grow, obeying the laws of nature.

If Bopp had a very vague idea of ​​the laws in relation to language and said that "one should not look for laws in languages ​​that could offer more staunch resistance than the banks of rivers and seas", then Schleicher was sure that "the life of linguistic organisms in general takes place according to certain laws with regular and gradual changes"1, and he believed in the operation of "the same laws on the banks of the Seine and the Po and on the banks of the Indus and the Ganges."

Based on the idea that “the life of a language is no different from the life of all other living organisms - plants and animals”, Schleicher creates his theory of the “family tree”, where both the common trunk and each branch are always divided in half, and elevates languages ​​to their own the primary source - the parent language, the “primary organism”, in which symmetry, regularity should dominate, and all of it should be simple; therefore, Schleicher reconstructs vocalism on the model of Sanskrit, and consonantism on the model of Greek, unifying declensions and conjugations according to one model, since the variety of sounds and forms, according to Schleicher, is the result of the further growth of languages. As a result of his reconstructions, Schleicher even wrote a fable in the Indo-European parent language.

Schleicher published the result of his comparative historical research in 1861–1862 in a book entitled Compendium of Comparative Grammar of the Indo-Germanic Languages.

Later studies by Schleicher's students showed the inconsistency of his approach to comparing languages ​​and to reconstruction.

Firstly, it turned out that the “simplicity” of the sound composition and forms of the Indo-European languages ​​is the result of later eras, when the former rich vocalism in Sanskrit and the former rich consonantism in Greek were reduced. On the contrary, it turned out that the data of rich Greek vocalism and rich Sanskrit consonantism are more reliable ways to reconstruct the Indo-European proto-language (studies by Collitz and I. Schmidt, Ascoli and Fikk, Osthoff, Brugmann, Leskin, and later by F. de Saussure, F.F. Fortunatov, I.A. Baudouin de Courtenay and others).

Secondly, the original "uniformity of forms" of the Indo-European proto-language also turned out to be shaken by research in the field of the Baltic, Iranian and other Indo-European languages, since older languages ​​\u200b\u200bmay have been more diverse and "multi-form" than their historical descendants.

The "young grammarians", as Schleicher's students called themselves, opposed themselves to the "old grammarians", representatives of Schleicher's generation, and above all renounced the naturalistic dogma ("language is a natural organism"), which their teachers professed.

The neo-grammarists (Paul, Osthoff, Brugmann, Leskin and others) were neither romantics nor naturalists, but based their "unbelief in philosophy" on the positivism of Auguste Comte and on the associative psychology of Herbart. The “sober” philosophical, or rather emphatically anti-philosophical, position of the neo-grammarists does not deserve due respect. But the practical results of the linguistic research of this numerous galaxy of scientists from different countries turned out to be very relevant.

In this school, the slogan was proclaimed that phonetic laws do not act everywhere and always in the same way (as Schleicher thought), but within a given language (or dialect) and in a certain era.

The works of K. Werner (1846-1896) showed that deviations and exceptions of phonetic laws are themselves due to the action of other phonetic laws. Therefore, as K. Werner said, “there must be, so to speak, a rule for incorrectness, you just need to open it.”

In addition (in the works of Baudouin de Courtenay, Osthoff, and especially in the works of G. Paul), it was shown that analogy is the same regularity in the development of languages ​​as phonetic laws.

The exceptionally subtle works on the reconstruction of archetypes by F. F. Fortunatov and F. de Saussure once again showed the scientific power of the comparative historical method.

All these works were based on comparisons of various morphemes and forms of Indo-European languages. Particular attention was paid to the structure of the Indo-European roots, which in the era of Schleicher, in accordance with the Indian theory of “ups”, were considered in three forms: normal, for example vid, in the first stage of the ascent - (guna) ved and in the second stage of the ascent (vrddhi) vayd, as system of complication of a simple primary root. In the light of new discoveries in the field of vocalism and consonantism of the Indo-European languages, the existing correspondences and differences in the sound design of the same roots in different groups of Indo-European languages ​​and in individual languages, as well as taking into account the conditions of stress and possible sound changes, the question of Indo-European roots was put differently. : the most complete form of the root was taken as primary, consisting of consonants and a diphthongic combination (syllabic vowel plus i,i, n, t, r, l); due to reduction (which is connected with accentology), weakened variants of the root could also appear on the 1st stage: i, and, n, t, r, l without a vowel, and further, on the 2nd stage: zero instead of i, and or and , t, r, l are non-syllabic. However, this did not fully explain some of the phenomena associated with the so-called “Shwa Indogermanicum”, i.e. with an indefinite weak sound, which was depicted as Ə.

F. de Saussure in his work "Memoire sur Ie systeme primitif des voyelles dans les langues indoeuropeennes", 1879, exploring various correspondences in the alternations of the root vowels of the Indo-European languages, came to the conclusion that e could be a non-syllabic element of diphthongs, and in the case complete reduction of a syllabic element could become syllabic. But since this kind of "sonantic coefficients" gave in different Indo-European languages, then e, then ã, then õ, it was to be assumed that the "seam" themselves had a different form: Ə1, Ə2, Ə3. Saussure himself did not draw all the conclusions, but suggested that the “algebraically” expressed “sonantic coefficients” A and O corresponded to sound elements that were once inaccessible directly from the reconstruction, the “arithmetic” explanation of which is still impossible.

After the texts of Vulgar Latin confirmed Romanesque reconstructions in the era of F. Dietz, this was the second triumph of the comparative historical method associated with direct foresight, since after deciphering in the 20th century. Hittite cuneiform monuments turned out that in the disappeared by the first millennium BC. e. In the Hittite (non-sitic) language, these “sound elements” were preserved and they are defined as “laryngeal”, denoted by h, and in other Indo-European languages, the combination he gave e, ho gave b, a eh > e, oh > o / a, from which we have the alternation long vowels in roots. In science, this set of ideas is known as the "laryngeal hypothesis". The number of disappeared "laryngeal" is calculated differently by different scientists.

Of course, these statements do not cancel the need for descriptive, and not historical, grammars, which are needed primarily in school, but it is clear that it would be impossible to build such grammars on the basis of "the blessed memory of Heise and Becker", and Engels very accurately pointed out the gap "school grammatical wisdom" of that time and the advanced science of that era, which developed under the sign of historicism, unknown to the previous generation.

For comparative linguists of the late XIX - early XX century. The “proto-language” is gradually becoming not the desired, but only a technical means of studying real-life languages, which was clearly formulated by Antoine Meillet (1866–1936), a student of F. de Saussure and neogrammarists.

“The comparative grammar of the Indo-European languages ​​is in the position that the comparative grammar of the Romance languages ​​would be in if Latin were not known: the only reality it deals with is the correspondences between the attested languages”1; “Two languages ​​are said to be related when they are both the result of two different evolutions of the same language that was in use before. The totality of related languages ​​constitutes the so-called language family”2, “the method of comparative grammar is applicable not to restore the Indo-European language in the form in which it was spoken, but only to establish a certain system of correspondences between historically attested languages”3. "The totality of these correspondences constitutes what is called the Indo-European language."

In these reasonings of A. Meillet, despite their sobriety and reasonableness, two features characteristic of positivism of the late 19th century were affected: firstly, the fear of broader and bolder constructions, the rejection of attempts to research going back centuries (which is not was afraid of the teacher A. Meillet - F. de Saussure, who ingeniously outlined the "laryngeal hypothesis"), and, secondly, anti-historicism. If we do not recognize the real existence of the base language as the source of the existence of related languages ​​that continue it in the future, then we should generally abandon the entire concept of the comparative historical method; if one accepts, as Meillet says, that "two languages ​​are called related when they are both the result of two different evolutions of the same language that was in use before", then one must try to investigate this "previously used source language" , using both the data of living languages ​​and dialects, and the testimony of ancient written monuments and using all the possibilities of correct reconstructions, taking into account the data of the development of the people, the bearer of these linguistic facts.

If it is impossible to completely reconstruct the base language, then it is possible to achieve the reconstruction of its grammatical and phonetic structure and, to some extent, the main fund of its vocabulary.

What is the attitude of Soviet linguistics to the comparative historical method and to the genealogical classification of languages ​​as a conclusion from comparative historical studies of languages?

1) The related community of languages ​​follows from the fact that such languages ​​originate from one base language (or group proto-language) through its disintegration due to the fragmentation of the carrier collective. However, this is a long and contradictory process, and not a consequence of the “splitting of a branch in two” of a given language, as A. Schleicher thought. Thus, the study of the historical development of a given language or a group of given languages ​​is possible only against the background of the historical fate of the population that was the bearer of a given language or dialect.

2) The base language is not only a “set of ... correspondences” (Meie), but a real, historically existing language that cannot be completely restored, but the basic data of its phonetics, grammar and vocabulary (to the least) can be restored, which was brilliantly confirmed according to the data of the Hittite language in relation to the algebraic reconstruction of F. de Saussure; behind the set of correspondences, the position of the reconstructive model should be preserved.

3) What and how can and should be compared in the comparative historical study of languages?

a) It is necessary to compare words, but not only words and not all words, and not according to their random consonances.

The “coincidence” of words in different languages ​​with the same or similar sound and meaning cannot prove anything, since, firstly, this may be the result of borrowing (for example, the presence of the word factory in the form of fabrique, Fabrik, fabriq, factories, fabrika and etc. in a variety of languages) or the result of an accidental coincidence: “so, in English and in New Persian, the same combination of articulations bad means “bad”, and yet the Persian word has nothing to do with English: it is pure “ game of nature. "A combined examination of the English lexicon and the New Persian lexicon shows that no conclusions can be drawn from this fact."

b) You can and should take the words of the compared languages, but only those that can historically belong to the era of the "base language". Since the existence of a base language must be assumed in the communal-tribal system, it is clear that the artificially created word of the era of capitalism factory is not suitable for this. What words are suitable for such a comparison? First of all, kinship names, these words in that distant era were the most important for determining the structure of society, some of them have survived to this day as elements of the main vocabulary of related languages ​​​​(mother, brother, sister), some have already “come into circulation”, i.e., it moved into a passive dictionary (brother-in-law, daughter-in-law, yatry), but both words are suitable for comparative analysis; for example, yatry, or yatrov, - "wife of the brother-in-law" - a word that has parallels in Old Church Slavonic, in Serbian, Slovene, Czech and Polish, where jetrew and the earlier jetry show a nasal vowel, which connects this root with the words womb, inside, inside -[values], with French entrailles, etc.

Numerals (up to ten), some primordial pronouns, words denoting parts of the body, and then the names of some animals, plants, tools are also suitable for comparison, but there may be significant differences between languages, since during migrations and communication with other peoples, one word could be lost, others could be replaced by strangers (for example, a horse instead of a horse), others could simply be borrowed.

4) Some "coincidences" of the roots of words or even words are not enough to clarify the relationship of languages; as in the 18th century. W. Johns wrote, “coincidences” are also necessary in the grammatical design of words. We are talking about grammatical design, and not about the presence in languages ​​of the same or similar grammatical categories. Thus, the category of the verb aspect is clearly expressed in the Slavic languages ​​and in some African languages; however, this is expressed materially (in the sense of grammatical methods and sound design) in completely different ways. Therefore, on the basis of this “coincidence” between these languages, there can be no talk of kinship.

The importance of the criterion of grammatical correspondences lies in the fact that if it is possible to borrow words (which happens most often), sometimes grammatical patterns of words (associated with certain derivational affixes), then inflectional forms, as a rule, cannot be borrowed. Therefore, a comparative comparison of case and verb-personal inflections most likely leads to the desired result.

5) When comparing languages, the sound design of the compared language plays a very important role. Without comparative phonetics there can be no comparative linguistics. As already mentioned above, the complete sound coincidence of the forms of words in different languages ​​cannot show and prove anything. On the contrary, partial coincidence of sounds and partial divergence, subject to regular sound correspondences, may be the most reliable criterion for the relationship of languages. When comparing the Latin form ferunt and the Russian take, at first glance it is difficult to find something in common. But if we make sure that the initial Slavic b in Latin regularly corresponds to f (brother - frater, bean - faba, they take -ferunt, etc.), then the sound correspondence of the initial Latin f to Slavic b becomes clear. As for inflections, the correspondence of Russian y before a consonant to Old Church Slavonic and Old Russian zh (i.e., nasal o) has already been indicated above, in the presence of combinations vowel + nasal consonant + consonant (or at the end of a word) in other Indo-European languages ​​(or at the end of a word), since such combinations these languages ​​did not give nasal vowels, but were preserved in the form -unt, -ont(i), -and, etc.

The establishment of regular "sound correspondences" is one of the first rules of the comparative-historical method of studying related languages.

6) As for the meanings of the compared words, they also do not have to coincide completely, but may diverge according to the laws of polysemy.

So, in the Slavic languages, the city, city, grod, etc. mean "a settlement of a certain type", and the coast, brjeg, bryag, brzeg, breg, etc. mean "shore", but corresponding to them in other related languages the words Garten and Berg (in German) mean "garden" and "mountain". It is easy to guess how *gord - originally a “fenced place” could get the meaning of “garden”, and *berg could get the meaning of any “shore” with or without a mountain, or, conversely, the meaning of any “mountain” by the water or without it . It happens that the meaning of the same words does not change when related languages ​​diverge (cf. Russian beard and the corresponding German Bart - "beard" or Russian head and the corresponding Lithuanian galva - "head", etc.).

7) When establishing sound correspondences, it is necessary to take into account historical sound changes, which, due to the internal laws of the development of each language, appear in the latter in the form of “phonetic laws” (see Chapter VII, § 85).

So, it is very tempting to compare the Russian word gat and the Norwegian gate - "street". However, this comparison does not give anything, as B. A. Serebrennikov correctly notes, since in the Germanic languages ​​\u200b\u200b(to which Norwegian belongs) voiced plosives (b, d, g) cannot be primary due to the “movement of consonants”, i.e. historical phonetic law. On the contrary, at first glance, such difficult-to-compare words as Russian wife and Norwegian kona can easily be brought into line if you know that in Scandinavian Germanic languages ​​[k] comes from [g], and in Slavic [g] in position before vowels the front row changed to [zh], thus the Norwegian kona and the Russian wife go back to the same word; cf. Greek gyne - "woman", where neither movement of consonants, as in Germanic, nor "palatalization" of [g] in [g] before front vowels, as in Slavic, occurred.

Language is the most important means of human communication. There is not a single type of human activity in which language would not be used to express their thoughts, feelings and will in order to achieve mutual understanding between them. And there is nothing surprising in the fact that people became interested in the language and created a science about it! This science is called linguistics or linguistics.

Linguistics studies all kinds, all changes of language. He is interested in everything connected with the amazing ability to speak, with the help of sounds to convey his thoughts to another; this ability in the whole world is peculiar only to man.

Linguists want to find out how people who have mastered this ability created their languages, how these languages ​​live, change, die, what laws their life is subject to.

Along with the living, they are occupied by "dead" languages, that is, those that no one speaks today. We know many of them. Some have disappeared from the memory of people; a rich literature has been preserved about them, grammars and dictionaries have come down to us, which means that the meaning of individual words has not been forgotten. There is only no one who would now consider them their native languages. Such is "Latin", the language of Ancient Rome; such is the ancient Greek language, such is the ancient Indian "Sanskrit." This is one of the languages ​​close to us, "Church Slavonic" or "Old Bulgarian".

But there are others - let's say Egyptian, the times of the pharaohs, Babylonian and Hittite. Two centuries ago, no one knew a single word in these languages. People looked with bewilderment and trepidation at the mysterious, incomprehensible inscriptions on rocks, on the walls of ancient ruins, on clay tiles and half-decayed papyri, made thousands of years ago. No one knew what these strange letters meant, sounds, what language they express. But the patience and wit of man have no limits. Linguists have unraveled the mysteries of many letters. This work is dedicated to the subtleties of unraveling the secrets of language.

Linguistics, like other sciences, has developed its own research methods, its own scientific methods, one of which is comparative historical (5, 16). A large role in the comparative historical method in linguistics belongs to etymology.

Etymology is the science that deals with the origin of words. Trying to establish the origin of a particular word, scientists have long compared data from different languages ​​with each other. At first, these comparisons were random and mostly naive.

Gradually, thanks to etymological comparisons of individual words, and then entire lexical groups, scientists came to the conclusion about the relationship of the Indo-European languages, which was later finally proved by analyzing grammatical correspondences.

Etymology has a prominent place in the comparative historical method of research, which in turn has opened up new possibilities for etymology.

The origin of many words of any particular language often remains unclear to us because in the process of language development, ancient connections between words were lost, the phonetic appearance of words changed. These ancient connections between words, their ancient meaning, can very often be found with the help of related languages.

Comparison of the most ancient linguistic forms with archaic forms of related languages, or the use of the comparative historical method often leads to the disclosure of the secrets of the origin of the word.

The foundations of the comparative historical method were laid on the basis of a comparison of materials from a number of related Indo-European languages. This method continued to develop throughout the 19th and 20th centuries and gave a powerful impetus to the further development of various areas of linguistics.

A group of related languages ​​is such a set of languages ​​between which regular correspondences are found in the sound composition and in the meaning of the roots of words and affixes. The identification of these regular correspondences that exist between related languages ​​is the task of comparative historical research, including etymology.

Genetic studies represent a set of methods for studying the history of both individual languages ​​and a group of related languages. The basis of the genetic comparison of linguistic phenomena is a certain number of genetically identical units (genetic identities), which is understood as the common origin of the elements of the language. So, for example, e in Old Slavonic and other Russians - the sky, in Latin - nebula "fog", German - Nebel "fog", ancient Indian -nabhah "cloud" roots restored in the general form *nebh - are genetically identical. The genetic identity of linguistic elements in several languages ​​makes it possible to establish or prove the relationship of these languages, since genetic, identical elements make it possible to restore (reconstruct) a single form of the past linguistic state.

As mentioned above, the comparative historical method in linguistics is one of the main ones and is a set of techniques that allow you to study the relationship between related languages ​​and describe their evolution in time and space, establish historical patterns in the development of languages. With the help of the comparative historical method, the diachronic (that is, the development of a language over a certain period of time) evolution of genetically close languages ​​is traced, based on evidence of their common origin.

The comparative-historical method in linguistics is connected with descriptive and general linguistics in a number of issues. European linguists, who became acquainted with Sanskrit at the end of the 18th century, consider comparative grammar to be the core of this method. And they completely underestimate the ideological and intellectual discoveries in the field of scientific philosophy and the natural sciences. Meanwhile, it was these discoveries that made it possible to produce the first universal classifications, consider the whole, determine the hierarchy of its parts and assume that all this is the result of some general laws. An empirical comparison of facts inevitably led to the conclusion that behind external differences, there must be an internal unity that needed interpretation. The principle of interpretation for the science of that time was historicism, that is, the recognition of the development of science in time, which is carried out in a natural way, and not by divine will. There was a new interpretation of the facts. This is no longer a "ladder of forms", but a "chain of development". The development itself was conceived in two versions: along an ascending line, from simple to complex and improved (more often) and less often as degradation from the best along a descending line - to the worst.

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Introduction

1. The origin and stages of development of the comparative historical method in linguistics

2. The essence of the comparative historical method in linguistics

3. Techniques of the comparative historical method

Conclusion

Bibliography

Introduction

Linguistics, like other sciences, has developed its own research methods, its own scientific methods. The comparative-historical method in linguistics is one of the main ones and is a set of techniques that allow you to study the relationship between related languages ​​and give a description of their evolution in time and space, and establish historical patterns in the development of languages. Using the comparative-historical method, the diachronic evolution of genetically close languages ​​is traced, based on the evidence of the commonality of their origin.

The comparative-historical method was established in linguistics at the beginning of the 19th century. The discovery of related languages ​​and techniques for their study was accomplished almost simultaneously in a number of countries. This method was very accurate and convincing in its results, played a very important role in the development of the science of language.

The relevance of the chosen topic is due to the fact that the issue of studying the linguistic heritage of the past occupies a central place in modern linguistics. The linguistic data obtained with the help of the comparative historical method are of great importance in the study of the most ancient epochs in the history of peoples.

The purpose of this work is to study the issue of the origin of the comparative historical method, to reveal its essence and techniques, to identify the main advantages and disadvantages (or limitations).

1. The origin and stages of development of the comparative historical methodVlinguistics

The first scientific conclusions that determined the ways of comparing languages ​​were made in the second half of the 18th century. philologist and orientalist William Jones. W. Jones, having become acquainted with Sanskrit and discovering its similarities in verbal roots and grammatical forms with Greek, Latin, Gothic and other languages, in 1786 proposed a completely new theory of linguistic kinship - about the origin of the languages ​​​​of their common parent language. He owns the following thoughts:

1) similarity not only in roots, but also in the forms of grammar cannot be the result of chance;

2) this is the kinship of languages ​​that go back to one common source;

3) this source, "perhaps no longer exists";

4) in addition to Sanskrit, Greek and Latin, the Germanic, Celtic, and Iranian languages ​​also belong to the same family of languages.

The further development of science confirmed the correct statements of W. Jones.

In the first quarter of the XIX century. works were published almost simultaneously in different countries, which actually "discovered" the comparative-historical method of studying languages. In 1816 the first work of Franz Bopp was published - "On the system of conjugation of the Sanskrit language in comparison with that of the Greek, Latin, Persian and Germanic languages." This German scientist went straight from the statement of W. Jones and studied the comparative method of conjugation of the main verbs in Sanskrit, Greek, Latin, Persian and Gothic (1816), later including data from the Old Church Slavonic, Lithuanian, Armenian and German languages. F. Bopp compared both roots and inflections (verbal and case endings), since he rightly believed that to establishkinship of languages ​​of correspondence of only roots is not enough, it is also necessarysimilarity of grammatical forms, since roots can be borrowed, and the system of grammatical endings, as a rule, cannot be borrowed. Thus, according to F. Bopp, the similarity of verb endings, along with the similarity of roots, can serve as a reliable guarantee for establishing the relationship of languages. Having studied the above languages, F. Bopp proved their relationship and singled them out into a special language family, which he called the Indo-Germanic (i.e. Indo-European) family of languages.

The Danish scientist Rasmus-Christian Rask followed a different path, emphasizing in every possible way that lexical correspondences between languages ​​are notreliable, grammatical is much more important, because borrowinginflections, and in particular inflections," never happens" . R. Rask studied the so-called Scandinavian languages ​​- Icelandic, Swedish, Norwegian, Danish - and sought to prove their relationship. In his work "Study in the field of the Old Norse language, or the origin of the Icelandic language" (1818), he described the method of "expanding circles", according to which, in order to establish the relationship of languages, one must go from comparing the closest related languages ​​to the relationship of groups and families. In addition, R. Rask identified several groups of words, by comparing which it is possible to establish the relationship of languages: 1) terms of relationship: mother -???? - mother - Mutter - madre (Italian, Spanish) - mвter (lat.); 2) names of pets: cow - kra?va (Czech) - krowa (Polish) -??? - cow - Kuh - cervus (" deer" ) (lat.); 3) names of body parts: nose - nos (Czech, Polish) - nose (English) - Nase (German) - nez (French) - naso (It.) - nariz (Spanish) - nris (lat.) - nosis (lit.); 4) numerals (from 1 to 10): ten - deset (Czech) -??? (? ) - ten (English) - zehn (German) - dix (French) - dieci (Italian) - diez (Spanish) -dEkb (Greek) - decem (lat.).

In 30-40 years. In the 19th century, the German philologist Jacob Grimm introduced a historical point of view on language into science. He noted that each language develops over a long period of time, i.e. has its own history. In the history of the development of human language, he singled out three periods: 1) ancient, 2) middle and 3) new. Ancient period - the creation, growth and formation of roots and words; the middle period is the flowering of inflection that has reached perfection; the new period is the stage of striving for clarity of thought, which leads to analyticity and, consequently, to the rejection of inflection. According to J. Grimm, in order to establish the relationship of languages, it is necessary to study their history. He was the author of the first historical grammar. And although it is called "German Grammar" (1819 - 1837), Grimm explores in it the history of the development of not only German, but all Germanic languages, starting with the oldest written monuments and up to the 19th century. This was the first experience of historical grammar, under the influence of which the Russian scientist F.I. Buslaev wrote a historical grammar of the Russian language. In fact, J. Grimm is considered one of the founders of the historical method in linguistics, while F. Bopp - of the comparative method.

In 1820, the main work of another founder of the comparative historical method, the Russian scientist A.Kh. Vostokov "Reasoning about the Slavic language". According to A.Kh. Vostokova to establish the relationship of languages, it is necessary to compare the data of written monuments of dead languages ​​withdataliving languages ​​and dialects. Comparing the roots and grammatical forms of the living Slavic languages ​​with the data of the dead Old Slavonic language, the scientist managed to unravel many incomprehensible facts of the Old Slavonic written monuments.

The merit of the founders of the comparative historical method in linguistics lies in the fact that they embodied the general position on the comparative and historical study of individual phenomena in a system of specific scientific methods consistent with the specific features of the object under study (i.e., language) and focused on resolving linguistic problems proper. .

2. The essence of comparative historylogical method in linguistics

If we consider the science of language in retrospect, then its history appears as a continuous struggle for a special method. Due to the fact that the language is an extremely diverse phenomenon, it allows different approaches to its study and, in fact, was originally studied in the context of different sciences: philosophy - in classical antiquity, in the complex study of folk literature and religious institutions - among the Arabs of the Caliphate era, in connection with the logic and philosophy of history - in Europe of the XVI-XVIII centuries. The beginning of the 19th century, which in linguistics is marked by the creation of a comparative historical method, partially synthesized these different scientific traditions in the study of language and thus different approaches. The very comparative-historical method of considering the phenomena of language was also borrowed by linguistics from other sciences, and many of its general provisions - such as, for example, the thesis of a single proto-people, which then broke up into a number of tribes - were developed and developed by the science of language in close collaboration with other cultural sciences.

By its very nature and general orientation, the comparative-historical method is suitable for resolving a limited range of linguistic questions. L. V. Shcherba limited the comparative historical (or simply comparative, as he called it) method to a range of special tasks, the nature of which is clear from his following words: “The essence of the comparative method primarily consists in a set of techniques that prove the historical identity or relationship of words and morphemes in cases where this is not obvious ... In addition, the comparative method consists of a special series of techniques that, through the study of phonetic alternations and correspondences, make it possible to restore, to one degree or another, the history of the sounds of a given language ". Other linguists already define the working possibilities of the comparative-historical method. “The comparative-historical method in linguistics in the special sense of this term,” writes, for example, A.I. Smirnitsky, “is a scientific method of restoring past linguistic facts not recorded in writing by systematic comparison of materially corresponding to each other later facts of two or more specific languages ​​known from written monuments or directly from living use in oral speech" . An obligatory prerequisite for the application of the comparative historical method is the presence of genetically similar elements in the compared languages, since the design principle of this method is the idea of ​​the genetic connections of languages. F. Bopp already pointed out that the comparative historical method is not an end in itself, but a tool for penetrating the "secrets" of language development. Speaking about the tasks of his main work, devoted to the comparative grammar of the Indo-European languages, he writes in the preface to it that he intends "to give a comparative and covering all related cases description of the organism of the languages ​​\u200b\u200bspecified in the title, to conduct a study of their physical and mechanical laws and the origin of forms expressing grammatical relationship". Thus, from the very beginning, in parallel with the creation of the comparative historical method, the formation of comparative historical linguistics took place - two concepts that cannot be confused. Comparative historical linguistics, in contrast to the comparative historical method, which is a way of solving a specific linguistic problem, is a set of linguistic problems raised initially in connection with the application of the comparative historical method. It also deals with the historical study of languages ​​in terms of their genetic relationships, but in the study of these problems, methods other than comparative historical methods can be applied.

Comparative historical method like any other language learning method, has advantages along with disadvantages. Firstly, this method turns out to be ineffective when studying the so-called isolated languages ​​(Chinese, Japanese, etc.), that is, those that do not have related languages. Secondly, using the comparative historical method, it is possible to reconstruct the phonetic and morphemic composition of the language - the foundations of the era immediately preceding the separation of individual language groups. However, the comparative historical method did not give positive results in solving problems of comparative historical lexicology and comparative historical syntax. Third, the comparative historical method makes it possible to penetrate into the history of languages ​​\u200b\u200bnot attested by written monuments, to discover and restore some initial unity of related languages, to identify the specific internal laws of their subsequent development, but the comparative historical method often operates with far from equivalent data. Some monuments represent material that is extremely disparate in chronological terms. Therefore, we cannot establish the changes that took place in periods of the development of languages ​​that were not attested by monuments. In the presence of chronologically motley and unequal material, it is impossible to restore either the living system of the base language in its entirety, or a strict picture of the subsequent development of languages. Fourth, the possibilities of applying the comparative-historical method in the study of various groups of related languages ​​are far from being the same. These possibilities depend on the number of materially related features within one or another group of languages. Fifth, with the help of the comparative historical method, it is possible to trace the differences that really exist between related languages ​​to a single source, but it is impossible to identify those differences between related languages ​​that existed in the past and were later lost. Using this method, it is impossible to establish the presence of parallel processes that occur in related languages ​​largely independently of each other. This method is powerless when studying such changes that have arisen as a result of the convergence and integration of languages.

3. Techniques of the comparative historical method in linguistics

The main methods of the comparative historical method are external and internal reconstruction and extracting information from the analysis of borrowed words.

The comparative historical method is based on a number of requirements, the observance of which increases the reliability of the conclusions obtained by this method. One of these requirements is that the language is a collection of parts, ancient and new, formed at different times. The technique of detecting genetically identical morphemes and words in related languages, identifying in them the results of regular sound changes in the source language, as well as building a hypothetical model of the language and rules for deriving specific morphemes of descendant languages ​​from this model is called external reconstruction. Each language gradually changes in the course of its development. If it were not for these changes, then the languages ​​\u200b\u200bthat go back to the same source (for example, Indo-European) would not differ at all from each other. Due to gradual changes in the process of their development, even closely related languages ​​differ significantly from each other. Take, for example, Russian and Ukrainian. During the period of its independent existence, each of these languages ​​has undergone various changes that have led to more or less significant differences in the field of phonetics, grammar, word formation and semantics. Already a simple comparison of Russian words place, month, knife, juice with Ukrainian misto, month, lower, sik shows that in a number of cases the Russian vowel e And O will match Ukrainian i. Similar discrepancies can be observed in the field of word formation: Russian words reader, listener, doer, sower act with the suffix of the actor - Tel, and the words corresponding to them in the Ukrainian language - reader, hearer, dicell, Withicell- have the suffix - h. Much more complex changes can be found when comparing other Indo-European languages. However, the method of external reconstruction has a number of disadvantages. The first drawback of the reconstruction is its "planar character". For example, when diphthongs were restored in the common Slavic language, which later changed into monophthongs ( oi > and; ei > i; oi, ai > e, etc.), various phenomena in the field of monophthongization of diphthongs did not occur simultaneously, but sequentially. The second drawback of the reconstruction is its straightforwardness, that is, the complex processes of differentiation and integration of closely related languages ​​and dialects, which occurred with varying degrees of intensity, are not taken into account. The "planar" and straightforward nature of the reconstruction ignored the possibility of the existence of parallel processes occurring independently and in parallel in related languages ​​and dialects. For example, in the 12th century, in English and German, long vowels were diphthongized in parallel: Old German hus, Old English hus"house"; modern german house, English house.

In close interaction with the external reconstruction is internal reconstruction. Its premise is to compare the facts of one language, existing in this language "synchronously", in order to identify more ancient forms of this language. For example, matching forms in Russian as bake - oven, allows you to set the second person to an earlier form you bake and identify phonetic transition k > c before front vowels. Reducing the number of cases in the declension system is also sometimes established by internal reconstruction within the same language. Modern Russian has six cases, while Old Russian had seven. The coincidence (syncretism) of the nominative and vocative cases (vocative) took place in the names of persons and personified natural phenomena (father, wind - sail). The presence of the vocative case in the Old Russian language is confirmed by comparison with the case system of the Indo-European languages ​​(Lithuanian, Sanskrit). A variation of the technique of internal reconstruction of the language is " philological method", which is reduced to the analysis of early written texts in a given language in order to detect prototypes of later language forms. This method is limited, since in most languages ​​of the world there are no written monuments arranged in chronological order, and the method does not go beyond one language traditions.

At different levels of the language system, the possibilities of reconstruction manifest themselves to varying degrees. The most substantiated and evidence-basedreconstruction in the field of phonology and morphology, thanks to a rather limited set of reconstructable units. The total number of phonemes in different parts of the world does not exceed 80. Phonological reconstruction becomes possible when the phonetic patterns that exist in the development of individual languages ​​are established. Correspondences between languages ​​are subject to rigid, clearly formulated "sound laws". These laws establish sound transitions that took place in the distant past under certain conditions. Therefore, in linguistics they are now talking not about sound laws, but about sound movements. These movements make it possible to judge how quickly and in what direction phonetic changes occur, as well as what sound changes are possible. For example, Old Slavic combinations ra, la, re pass in modern Russian into -oro-, -olo-, -ere-(For example, kral - king, gold - gold, breg - coast). Over the millennia, a large number of different phonetic changes took place in the Indo-European languages, which, despite all the complexity, were of a pronounced systemic nature. If, for example, a change To V h happened in case hand - pen, river - river then it should appear in all other examples of this kind: dog - doggy, cheek - cheek, pike - pike etc. This regularity of phonetic changes in each language led to the fact that between the sounds of individual Indo-European languages ​​there were strict phonetic correspondences that make it possible to judge the relationship of words. So, the initial European bh [bh] in Slavic languages ​​turned into a simple b, and in Latin it changed to f [f]. As a result, between the initial Latin f and Slavic b certain phonetic relationships were established. Similar to the phonetic changes that occurred in the Germanic languages, Latin with [k] in German became consistent h [x]. Comparing, for example, Latin host-, Old Russian gost-, gothic gast- scientists have established a correspondence h in Latin and G, d in Central Russian and Gothic. latin O, Central Russian O corresponded to the Gothic A, and the sound was more ancient O. The rate of linguistic changes fluctuates over a very wide range, therefore, when establishing phonetic correspondences, it is necessary to take into account their relative chronology, that is, it is necessary to find out which of the elements are primary and which are secondary. For this, it is important to determine the temporal sequence of linguistic phenomena and the combination of phenomena in time.

Knowledge of phonetic patterns gives scientists the opportunity to restore the more ancient sound of the word, and comparison with related Indo-European forms very often clarifies the question of the origin of the analyzed words, allows you to establish their etymology. The same regularity characterizes word-formation processes. The analysis of word-formation series and suffixal alternations that exist or existed in ancient times is one of the most important research methods with which scientists manage to penetrate into the most secret secrets of the origin of a word. For example, a large number of words with the meaning flour are formations from verbs denoting grind, crush, crush.

comparative historical linguistics morpheme reconstruction

As we can see, if grammatical meanings are expressed in languages ​​in the same way and in the corresponding sound design, then this indicates more than anything about the relationship of these languages. Or another example, where not only roots, but also grammatical inflections -ut, -zht, -anti, -onti, -unt, -and exactly correspond to each other and go back to one common source (although the meaning of this word in other languages ​​is different from Slavic - "carry"):

There are many such rows. They are called semantic series, the analysis of which makes it possible to introduce some elements of consistency into such a difficult area of ​​etymological research as the study of word meanings.

In the comparative-historical study of languages, it is necessary to emphasize borrowing. Borrowings, remaining in the same phonetic form in the borrowing language, may retain the archetype or, in general, the more ancient appearance of the given roots and words, since the borrowing language did not undergo those phonetic changes that are characteristic of the language from which the borrowing originated. So, for example, the full-vowel Russian word oatmeal and a word that reflects the result of the disappearance of former nasal vowels, tow are available in the form of ancient borrowing talkkuna And kuontalo in Finnish, where the form of these words is preserved, closer to the archetypes. Hungarian szalma- "straw" shows the ancient connections of the Ugrians (Hungarians) and the Eastern Slavs in the era before the formation of full-vowel combinations in the East Slavic languages ​​and confirms the reconstruction of the Russian word straw in the common Slavic form solma. However, despite the great importance of the study of vocabulary in linguistics, due to the fact that the vocabulary of any language changes much faster compared to the system of derivational and inflectional formats, this technique of the comparative historical method is the least developed.

Conclusion

The most effective method for studying the genetic relationships between related languages ​​is the comparative historical method, which makes it possible to establish a system of comparisons on the basis of which it is possible to restore the history of a language.

The comparative-historical study of languages ​​is based on the fact of the appearance of language components at different times, which leads to the fact that in languages ​​there are simultaneously layers belonging to different chronological slices. Due to its specificity as a means of communication, language cannot change simultaneously in all elements. The various causes of language change also cannot operate simultaneously. All this makes it possible to restore, using the comparative historical method, a picture of the gradual development and change of languages, starting from the time of their separation from the parent language of a particular language family.

The comparative-historical method in linguistics has many advantages:

relative simplicity of the procedure (if it is known that the compared morphemes are related);

quite often the reconstruction is extremely lightened, or even already represented by a part of the compared elements;

the possibility of ordering the stages of development of one or more phenomena in a relatively chronological plan;

the priority of form over function, while the first part remains more stable than the last.

However, this method also has its own difficulties and disadvantages (or limitations), which are mainly related to the "linguistic" time factor:

the given language used for comparison may be separated from the original base language or another related language by such a number of "language" time steps that most of the inherited language elements have been lost and, therefore, the given language itself is excluded from comparison, or becomes unreliable material for him;

the impossibility of reconstructing those phenomena whose antiquity exceeds the temporal depth of a given language - the material for comparison becomes extremely unreliable due to profound changes;

borrowings in a language are especially difficult (in other languages, the number of borrowed words exceeds the number of native ones).

Nevertheless, thanks to the establishment of correspondences between the correlated elements of different related languages ​​and the scheme of continuity in time of the elements of a given language, comparative historical linguistics has acquired a completely independent status.

The comparative-historical study of languages ​​is not only of scientific and cognitive significance, but also of great scientific and methodological value, which lies in the fact that the parent language is reconstructed during the study. This parent language as a starting point helps to understand the history of the development of a particular language.

Bibliography

Zvegintsev V.A. Essays on general linguistics. - M., 1962.

Zvegintsev V.A. History of linguistics of the XIX-XX centuries in essays and extracts. Part I. - M.: Enlightenment, 1964.

Smirnitsky A.I. Comparative-historical method and the definition of linguistic kinship. - M., 1955.

Reformatsky A. A. Introduction to Linguistics / Ed. V.A. Vinogradov. - M.: Aspect Press, 1996.- 536 p.

Serebrennikov B.A. General linguistics. Methods of linguistic research. M., 1973.

Bondarenko A.V. Modern comparative-historical linguistics / Scientific notes of the Leningrad State Pedagogical Institute. - L., 1967.

Knabeg S.O. Application of the comparative-historical method in linguistics / "Issues of linguistics". - No. 1. 1956.

Ruzavin G.I. Methods of scientific research. M. 1975.

Stepanov Yu.S. Methods and principles of modern linguistics. M.., 1975.

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thesis, added 06/18/2017


The concept of text in linguistics. Transcript of Humanitarian Thinking. The concept of discourse in modern linguistics. Features of creating text linguistics. Discourse analysis as a method of analyzing coherent speech or writing. Field of study of textual science.

abstract, added 09/29/2009


Dominant trends in linguistics of the twentieth century. Directions for the development of gender studies in linguistics: expansionism; anthropocentrism; neofunctionality; explanatory. The essence of the parametric model for describing gender communicative behavior.