comparative linguistics

American  

noun

1. the study of the correspondences between languages that have a common origin.

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Other Word Forms

• comparative linguist noun

Example Sentences

"Researchers have worked on this for decades, mostly in France and Russia, but they were met with little success," Eugen Hill, a professor of comparative linguistics at the University of Cologne who did not participate in the study, said in the video.

From Scientific American

By a method termed glotto-chronology, based on calculations of how rapidly words tend to change over historical time, comparative linguistics can even yield estimated dates for domestications or crop arrivals.

From Literature

If your safety school was strong in physics but you later discover a love of comparative linguistics, you may wish that you had chosen a college or university with stronger international programs.

From US News

Actually I am not only a musicologist, but a social scientist who's worked for many years with a database I encoded and helped design, and published peer reviewed scientific studies on semiotics, cultural evolution and the comparative study of musical styles throughout the world, research comparable to comparative linguistics, though unfortunately not as widely known.

From New York Times

Now it has begun to draw other languages, other peoples and their histories, into its sphere; it has, through the mediation of comparative linguistics, already struck up, though as yet somewhat cautiously, a friendship with physiology.

From Project Gutenberg