Editing Comparative method (section)

==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.<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Stevens |first=Benjamin |date=2006 |title=Aeolism: Latin as a Dialect of Greek |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/30038039 |journal=The Classical Journal |volume=102 |issue=2 |pages=115–144 |jstor=30038039 |issn=0009-8353}}</ref>

Even though grammarians of Antiquity had access to other languages around them ([[Oscan language|Oscan]], [[Umbrian language|Umbrian]], [[Etruscan language|Etruscan]], [[Gaulish language|Gaulish]], [[Ancient Egyptian|Egyptian]], [[Parthian language|Parthian]]...), they showed little interest in comparing, studying, or just documenting them. Comparison between languages really began after classical antiquity.

===Early works===
{{See also|Uralic languages#Uralic studies}}
In the 9th or 10th century AD, [[Yehuda Ibn Quraysh]] compared the phonology and morphology of Hebrew, Aramaic and Arabic but attributed the resemblance to the Biblical story of Babel, with Abraham, Isaac and Joseph retaining Adam's language, with other languages at various removes becoming more altered from the original Hebrew.<ref>"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." [http://lameen.googlepages.com/ibn-quraysh.html Introduction of Risalat Yehuda Ibn Quraysh – مقدمة رسالة يهوذا بن قريش] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090729093347/http://lameen.googlepages.com/ibn-quraysh.html |date=29 July 2009 }}</ref>

[[File:Sajnovics - Demonstratio.jpg|thumb|Title page of Sajnovic's 1770 work.|alt=|258x258px]]

In publications of 1647 and 1654, [[Marcus Zuerius van Boxhorn]] first described a rigorous methodology for historical linguistic comparisons<ref name="Driem">George van Driem [http://www.eastling.org/paper/Driem.pdf The genesis of polyphyletic linguistics] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110726012439/http://www.eastling.org/paper/Driem.pdf|date=26 July 2011}}</ref> and proposed the existence of an [[Indo-European languages|Indo-European]] proto-language, which he called "Scythian", unrelated to Hebrew but ancestral to Germanic, Greek, Romance, Persian, Sanskrit, Slavic, Celtic and Baltic languages. The Scythian theory was further developed by [[Andreas Jäger]] (1686) and [[William Wotton]] (1713), who made early forays to reconstruct the primitive common language. In 1710 and 1723, [[Lambert ten Kate]] first formulated the regularity of [[sound law]]s, introducing among others the term [[root vowel]].<ref name="Driem" />

Another early systematic attempt to prove the relationship between two languages on the basis of similarity of [[grammar]] and [[lexicon]] was made by the Hungarian [[János Sajnovics]] in 1770, when he attempted to demonstrate the relationship between [[Sami languages|Sami]] and [[Hungarian language|Hungarian]]. That work was later extended to all [[Finno-Ugric languages]] in 1799 by his countryman [[Samuel Gyarmathi]].<ref name="ssix">{{harvnb|Szemerényi|1996|p=6}}.</ref> However, the origin of modern [[historical linguistics]] is often traced back to [[William Jones (philologist)|Sir William Jones]], an English [[Philology|philologist]] living in [[India]], who in 1786 made his famous {{nowrap|observation:<ref>{{cite web|last=Jones|first=Sir William|title=The Third Anniversary Discourse delivered 2 February 1786 By the President [on the Hindus]|editor-first=Guido|editor-last=Abbattista|publisher=Eliohs Electronic Library of Historiography|url=http://www.eliohs.unifi.it/testi/700/jones/Jones_Discourse_3.html|access-date=18 December 2009}}</ref>}}<blockquote>The [[Sanskrit|Sanscrit language]], whatever be its antiquity, is of a wonderful structure; more perfect than the [[Ancient Greek language|Greek]], more copious than the [[Latin]], and more exquisitely refined than either, yet bearing to both of them a stronger affinity, both in the roots of verbs and the forms of grammar, than could possibly have been produced by accident; so strong indeed, that no philologer could examine them all three, without believing them to have sprung from some common source, which, perhaps, no longer exists. There is a similar reason, though not quite so forcible, for supposing that both the [[Germanic languages|Gothick]] and the [[Celtic languages|Celtick]], though blended with a very different idiom, had the same origin with the Sanscrit; and the [[Persian language|old Persian]] might be added to the same family.</blockquote>

===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 [[Proto-Indo-European]] (PIE). The first professional comparison between the [[Indo-European languages]] that were then known was made by the German linguist [[Franz Bopp]] in 1816. He did not attempt a reconstruction but demonstrated that Greek, Latin and Sanskrit shared a common structure and a common lexicon.<ref>{{harvnb|Szemerényi|1996|pp=5–6}}</ref> In 1808, [[Karl Wilhelm Friedrich von Schlegel|Friedrich Schlegel]] first stated the importance of using the eldest possible form of a language when trying to prove its relationships;<ref>{{harvnb|Szemerényi|1996|p=7}}</ref> in 1818, [[Rasmus Christian Rask]] developed the principle of regular sound-changes to explain his observations of similarities between individual words in the Germanic languages and their cognates in Greek and {{nowrap|Latin.<ref>{{harvnb|Szemerényi|1996|p=17}}</ref>}} [[Jacob Grimm]], better known for his ''[[Grimm's Fairy Tales|Fairy Tales]]'', used the comparative method in ''Deutsche Grammatik'' (published 1819–1837 in four volumes), which attempted to show the development of the [[Germanic languages]] from a common origin, which was the first systematic study of [[Historical linguistics|diachronic]] language change.<ref>{{harvnb|Szemerényi|1996|pp=7–8}}.</ref>

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,<ref>{{harvnb|Szemerényi|1996|p=19}}.</ref> [[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 [[phonology|phonological]] change in one [[phoneme]] could depend on other factors within the same word (such as neighbouring phonemes and the position of the [[stress (linguistics)|accent]]<ref>{{harvnb|Szemerényi|1996|p=20}}.</ref>), which are now called ''conditioning environments''.

===Neo-grammarian approach===
Similar discoveries made by the ''Junggrammatiker'' (usually translated as "[[Neogrammarians]]") at the [[University of Leipzig]] in the late 19th century led them to conclude that all sound changes were ultimately regular, resulting in the famous statement by [[Karl Brugmann]] and [[Hermann Osthoff]] in 1878 that "sound laws have no exceptions".<ref name=":0">{{harvnb|Szemerényi|1996|p=21}}.</ref> That idea is fundamental to the modern comparative method since it necessarily assumes regular correspondences between sounds in related languages and thus regular sound changes from the proto-language. The ''Neogrammarian hypothesis'' led to the application of the comparative method to reconstruct [[Proto-Indo-European language|Proto-Indo-European]] since [[Indo-European languages|Indo-European]] was then by far the most well-studied language family. Linguists working with other families soon followed suit, and the comparative method quickly became the established method for uncovering linguistic relationships.<ref name="ssix"/>