comparative method

American  

noun

Historical Linguistics.

1. a body of procedures and criteria used by linguists to determine whether and how two or more languages are related and to reconstruct forms of their hypothetical parent language.

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Example Sentences

Buckland adopted also in the liassic case his actualistic – comparative method to infer a possible behaviour of the extinct animals:

From Scientific American • Mar. 12, 2014

The way linguists compare words from descendant languages to reconstruct the parent language is called, appropriately, the comparative method.

From Scientific American • Feb. 12, 2013

Jacob Grimm, one of the Brothers Grimm of fairy tale fame, used the comparative method to show how Germanic languages developed from a common ancestor.

From Scientific American • Feb. 12, 2013

A methodology that has proved useful involves the comparative method and so-called natural experiments.

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

Comparison is the instrument with which science works, and a scientific grammar, accordingly, is one in which the comparative method has been applied to the relations of speech.

From Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 12, Slice 3 "Gordon, Lord George" to "Grasses" by Various