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comparative linguistics

American  

noun

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

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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 "Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies" by Jared M. Diamond

Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023

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