Comparative historical method of language research. Comparative historical method in linguistics

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 and genetically (as a fact of origin from a common proto-language). Comparative historical linguistics deals with establishing the degree of relationship between languages (constructing a genealogical classification of languages), reconstructing proto-languages, studying diachronic processes in the history of languages, their groups and families, and the etymology of words.

The “impetus” 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 wonders described in the old novel “Alexandria”. The travels to India of Marco Polo (13th century), Afanasy Nikitin (15th century) and the descriptions they left did not dispel the legends about the “land of gold and white elephants”.

The first one to notice the resemblance Indian words with Italian and Latin, there was Philippe Sassetti, an Italian traveler of the 16th century, which 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 Jonze (1746–1794), having studied Sanskrit manuscripts and becoming acquainted with modern Indian languages, was able to write:

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

This marked the beginning of comparative linguistics, and the further development of science confirmed, although declarative, but correct, the statements of V. Jonze.

The main thing in his thoughts:

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

2) this is a kinship of languages going back to one common source;

3) this source “perhaps no longer exists”;

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

At the beginning of the 19th century. Independently of each other, different scientists from different countries began to clarify the related relationships of languages within a particular family and achieved remarkable results.

Franz Bopp (1791–1867) directly followed the statement of W. Jonze and studied the conjugation of main verbs in Sanskrit, Greek, Latin and Gothic using the comparative method (1816), comparing both roots and inflections, which was methodologically particularly important, since the correspondence roots and words are not enough to establish the relationship of languages; if the material design of inflections provides the same reliable criterion for sound correspondences - which cannot in any way be attributed to borrowing or accident, 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 the “proto-language” for Indo European languages was Sanskrit, and although he later tried to include in the related circle of Indo-European languages such alien languages as Malay and Caucasian, but with his first work, and later, drawing on data from Iranian, Slavic, Baltic languages and the Armenian language, Bopp proved on a large surveyed material declarative thesis of V. Jonze 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, since borrowing inflections, and in particular inflections, “never happens.”

Having started his research with the Icelandic language, Rask compared it primarily with other “Atlantic” languages: Greenlandic, Basque, Celtic - and denied them any kinship (regarding the Celtic, Rask later changed his mind). Rusk then compared Icelandic (1st circle) with the closest relative Norwegian and got 2nd circle; he compared this second circle 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 Germanic data with the testimony of Greek and Latin languages.

Unfortunately, Rusk was not attracted to Sanskrit even after he visited Russia and India; this narrowed his “circles” and impoverished his conclusions.

However, the involvement of Slavic and especially Baltic languages significantly compensated for these shortcomings.

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

“Rask is significantly inferior to Bopp in that he does not appeal to Sanskrit; but he points to the original identity of the languages being brought together, without getting carried away by vain attempts to explain the original forms; he is content, for example, with the statement that “every ending of the Icelandic language can be found in a more or less clear form in Greek and Latin,” and in this respect his book is more scientific and less outdated than the works of Bopp.” It should be pointed out that Rask’s work was published in 1818 in Danish and was only published in German in 1822 in an abbreviated form (translation by I. S. Vater).

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

Vostokov studied only Slavic languages, and primarily the Old Church Slavonic language, the place of which had to be determined in the circle of Slavic languages. By comparing the roots and grammatical forms of the living Slavic languages with the data of the Old Church Slavonic language, Vostokov was able to unravel many previously incomprehensible facts of the Old Church Slavonic written monuments. Thus, Vostokov is credited with solving the “mystery of the Yus,” i.e. the letters zh and a, which he identified as designations of nasal vowels, based on a comparison:

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

In addition, Vostokov, using the material of Slavic languages, showed what the sound correspondences of related languages are, such as, for example, the fate of the combinations tj, dj in Slavic languages (cf. Old Slavic svђsha, Bulgarian svesht [svasht], Serbo-Croatian cbeħa, Czech svice, Polish 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), correspondence to Russian full-voiced forms like city, head (cf. Old Slavonic grad, Bulgarian grad, Serbo-Croatian grad, Czech hrad - castle, kremlin, Polish grod - from Common Slavic *gordu; and Old Slavic head, Bulgarian head, Serbo-Croatian head, Czech hiava, Polish gfowa - from Common Slavic *golva, etc.), as well as the method of reconstructing archetypes or primordial 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 demonstrated in its methodology and technique.

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

At this time, individual scientists describe in a new way the facts of individual 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 the German language, Theodor Benfey (1818–1881) in Sanskrit, Frantisek Miklosic (1818–1891) in Slavic languages, August Schleicher (1821–1868) in the Baltic languages and in the German language, F.I. Buslaev (1818–1897) in Russian language and others.

The works of the novelistic school of F. Dietz were of particular importance for testing and establishing the comparative historical method. Although the use of the method of comparison and reconstruction of archetypes has become common among comparative linguists, skeptics are rightfully perplexed without seeing the actual testing of the new method. Romance brought this verification with its research. The Romano-Latin archetypes, restored by the school of F. Dietz, were confirmed by written recorded facts in the publications of Vulgar (folk) Latin - the ancestor language of the Romance languages.

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

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

If in the first third of the 19th century. scientists who developed the comparative method, as a rule, proceeded from idealistic romantic premises (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 greatest linguist of the 50–60s. XIX century, naturalist and Darwinist August Schleicher (1821–1868) allegorical and metaphorical expressions of the romantics: “the organism of language”, “youth, maturity and decline of 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 ancestry and genealogy as all living beings. According to Schleicher, languages do not develop, but rather grow, obeying the laws of nature.

If Bopp had a very unclear idea of the laws in relation to language and said that “one should not look for laws in languages that could provide more persistent resistance than the banks of rivers and seas,” then Schleicher was sure that “the life of linguistic organisms in general occurs according to known laws with regular and gradual changes”1, and he believed in the operation of “the same laws on the banks of the Seine and Po and on the banks of the Indus and Ganges.”

Based on the idea that “the life of a language does not differ in any significant way 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 traces languages to their own to the primary source - the proto-language, the “primary organism”, in which symmetry, regularity should prevail, 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 proto-language.

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

Later studies by Schleicher's students showed the inconsistency of his approach to language comparison and reconstruction.

First, 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 the Greek language were reduced. It turned out, on the contrary, that the data of rich Greek vocalism and rich Sanskrit consonantism are more correct paths to the reconstruction of the Indo-European proto-language (research by Collitz and I. Schmidt, Ascoli and Fick, Osthoff, Brugmann, Leskin, and later by F. de Saussure, F.F. Fortunatov, I.A. Baudouin de Courtenay, etc.).

Secondly, the initial “uniformity of forms” of the Indo-European proto-language also turned out to be shaken by research in the field of Baltic, Iranian and other Indo-European languages, since more ancient languages could be more diverse and “multiform” than their historical descendants.

The “young grammarians,” as Schleicher’s students called themselves, contrasted themselves with the “old grammarians,” representatives of Schleicher’s generation, and first of all renounced the naturalistic dogma (“language is a natural organism”) professed by their teachers.

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

This school proclaimed the slogan that phonetic laws do not operate 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 discover 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 pattern in the development of languages as phonetic laws.

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 Indo-European roots, which in Schleicher’s era, in accordance with the Indian theory of “ascents”, were considered in three forms: normal, for example vid, in the first stage of ascent - (guna) ved and in the second stage of ascent (vrddhi) vayd, as a system of complication of a simple primary root. In the light of new discoveries in the field of vocalism and consonantism of Indo-European languages, existing correspondences and divergences in the sound design of the same roots in different groups Indo-European languages and in individual languages, as well as taking into account stress conditions and possible sound changes, the question of Indo-European roots was posed differently: the most complete type of root was taken as primary, consisting of consonants and a diphthong combination (syllabic vowel plus i, i, n, t , r, l); thanks to reduction (which is associated with accentology), weakened versions of the root could also arise at the 1st stage: i, i, n, t, r, l without a vowel, and further, at the 2nd stage: zero instead of i, and or and , t, r, l non-syllabic. However, this did not fully explain some of the phenomena associated with the so-called “schwa indogermanicum”, i.e. with a vague 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, examining various correspondences in the alternations of root vowels of Indo-European languages, came to the conclusion that e could be a non-syllabic element of diphthongs, and in the case complete reduction of the syllabic element could become syllabic. But since this kind of “sonantic coefficients” was given in different Indo-European languages either e, then ã, then õ, it should be assumed that the “schwa” 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 reconstruction, the “arithmetic” explanation of which is still impossible.

After the confirmation of Romanesque reconstructions in the era of F. Dietz by the texts of Vulgar Latin, 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 to have disappeared by the first millennium BC. e. In the Hittite (Nesitic) language, these “sound elements” were preserved and they are defined as “laringal”, denoted by h, and in other Indo-European languages the combination he gave e, ho gave b, a eh > e, oh > o/a, whence we have the alternation long vowels in roots. In science, this set of ideas is known as the “laryngeal hypothesis.” Different scientists calculate the number of disappeared “laryngeals” in different ways.

Of course, these statements do not negate the need for descriptive, rather than historical, grammars, which are needed primarily in school, but it is clear that such grammars could not be built on the basis of “Heise and Becker of blessed memory,” and Engels very precisely pointed out the gap “school grammatical wisdom” of that time and advanced science of that era, developing under the sign of historicism, unknown to the previous generation.

For comparative linguists of the late 19th–early 20th centuries. “proto-language” gradually becomes not the sought-after language, but only a technical means of studying really existing languages, which was clearly formulated by the student of F. de Saussure and the neo-grammarians - Antoine Meillet (1866–1936).

“The comparative grammar of the Indo-European languages is in the position in which the comparative grammar of the Romance languages would have been if Latin had not been known: the only reality with which it deals 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 previously in use. The set of related languages constitutes the so-called language family”2, “the method of comparative grammar is applicable not to restore the Indo-European language as 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 the positivism of the late 19th century were reflected: firstly, the fear of broader and bolder constructions, the rejection of attempts at research going back centuries (which is not the teacher A. Meillet was afraid of - F. de Saussure, who brilliantly 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 we recognize, 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 previously in use,” then we must try to investigate this “previously in use source language” , using 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 who bear these linguistic facts.

If it is impossible to reconstruct the base language completely, then it is possible to achieve a reconstruction of its grammatical and phonetic structure and, to some extent, the basic 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 community. 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 group of given languages is possible only against the background of the historical fate of the population that was the speaker of a given language or dialect.

2) The basis language is not only a “set of... correspondences” (Meillet), but a real, historically existing language that cannot be completely restored, but the basic data of its phonetics, grammar and vocabulary (to the least extent) can be restored, which has been brilliantly confirmed according to the data of the Hittite language in relation to the algebraic reconstruction of F. de Saussure; behind the totality 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 by 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 a consequence of borrowing (for example, the presence of the word factory in the form fabrique, Fabrik, fabriq, factories, fabrika and etc. in a variety of languages) or the result of a random coincidence: “so, in English and in New Persian the same combination of articulations bad means “bad,” and yet the Persian word has nothing in common with English: it is pure “ game of nature." “A cumulative examination of English vocabulary and New Persian vocabulary shows that no conclusions can be drawn from this fact.”

b) You can and should take words from the languages being compared, but only those that historically can relate to the era of the “base language”. Since the existence of a base language should be assumed in a 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, the names of kinship, 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 basic vocabulary fund related languages (mother, brother, sister), some have already “went into print,” that is, they have passed into the passive dictionary (brother-in-law, daughter-in-law, yatra), but both words are suitable for comparative analysis; for example, yatra, or yatrov - “brother-in-law’s wife” - a word that has parallels in Old Church Slavonic, Serbian, Slovenian, Czech and Polish, where jetrew and the earlier jetry show a nasal vowel, which connects this root with the words womb, inside, inside -[ness], with French entrailles, etc.

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

4) “Coincidences” of the roots of words or even words alone are not enough to determine the relationship of languages; as already in the 18th century. wrote V. Jonze, “coincidences” are also necessary in the grammatical design of words. We are talking specifically about grammatical design, and not about the presence of the same or similar grammatical categories in languages. Thus, the category of verbal aspect is clearly expressed in Slavic languages and in some African languages; however, this is expressed materially (in the sense grammatical ways and sound design) in completely different ways. Therefore, based on this “coincidence” between these languages, there can be no talk of kinship.

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

5) When comparing languages, the sound design of the one being compared plays a very important role. Without comparative phonetics there can be no comparative linguistics. As already stated above, the complete sound coincidence of the forms of words in different languages cannot show or prove anything. On the contrary, partial coincidence of sounds and partial divergence, provided there are 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 detect a commonality. But if we are convinced that the initial Slavic b in Latin regularly corresponds to f (brother - frater, bean - faba, take -ferunt, etc.), then the sound correspondence of the initial Latin f to the Slavic b becomes clear. As for inflections, the correspondence of Russian u before a consonant with Old Slavic and Old Russian zh (i.e., nasal o) has already been indicated in the presence of vowel + nasal consonant + consonant combinations in other Indo-European languages (or at the end of a word), since such combinations in these languages, nasal vowels were not given, but were preserved as -unt, -ont(i), -and, etc.

The establishment of regular “sound correspondences” is one of the first rules of the comparative-historical methodology for studying related languages.

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

So, in Slavic languages city, city, grod, etc. mean “ locality of a certain type,” and shore, bridge, brig, brzeg, breg, etc. mean “shore,” but the words Garten and Berg (in German) corresponding to them in other related languages mean “garden” and “mountain.” It is not difficult 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” near 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 development of each language, manifest themselves in the latter in the form of “phonetic laws” (see Chapter VII, § 85).

Thus, 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 Germanic languages (to which Norwegian belongs) voiced plosives (b, d, g) cannot be primary due to the “movement of consonants,” i.e. historically valid phonetic law. On the contrary, at first glance such difficultly comparable words as Russian wife and Norwegian kona, can be easily brought into correspondence if you know that in the Scandinavian Germanic languages [k] comes from [g], and in the Slavic [g] in the position before the front vowels changed into [zh], thereby the Norwegian kona and Russian wife goes back to the same word; Wed Greek gyne - “woman”, where there was neither movement of consonants, as in Germanic, nor “palatalization” of [g] in [zh] before front vowels, as in Slavic.

Language is the most important means of human communication. There is not a single type of human activity in which language is not used to express their thoughts, feelings and will to achieve mutual understanding between them. And it is not surprising that people became interested in language and created a science about it! This science is called linguistics or linguistics.

Linguistics studies all types, all changes of language. He is interested in everything related to the amazing ability to speak, to convey his thoughts to others with the help of sounds; This ability throughout the world is characteristic only of man.

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

Along with living ones, they are occupied by “dead” languages, that is, those that no one speaks today. We know quite a few of them. Some have disappeared from human memory; A rich literature has been preserved about them, grammars and dictionaries have reached us, which means that the meaning of individual words has not been forgotten. There is just no one who now considers them their native languages. This is “Latin,” the language of Ancient Rome; that's how it is ancient greek language, such is the ancient Indian “Sanskrit”. One of the languages closest to us is “Church Slavonic” or “Old Bulgarian”.

But there are others - say, Egyptian, from 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 and sounds meant, what language they expressed. But man's patience and wit have no limits. Linguistic scientists have unraveled the secrets of many letters. This work is dedicated to the subtleties of unraveling the mysteries of language.

Linguistics, like other sciences, has developed its own research techniques, its own scientific methods, one of which is comparative historical (5, 16). Etymology plays a large role in the comparative historical method in linguistics.

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. 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 kinship of Indo-European languages, which was later definitively proven through the analysis of grammatical correspondences.

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

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

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

The foundations of the comparative historical method were laid on the basis of 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 a collection of languages between which there are regular correspondences in sound composition and in the meaning of word roots and affixes. Identifying these natural correspondences that exist between related languages is the task of comparative historical research, including etymology.

Genetic research represents a set of techniques for studying the history of both individual languages and groups of related languages. The basis for genetic comparison of linguistic phenomena is a certain number of genetically identical units (genetic identities), by which we mean the common origin of language elements. So, for example, e in Old Church Slavonic and other Russian - sky, in Latin - nebula "fog", German - Nebel "fog", Old Indian -nabhah "cloud" the 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 make it possible to study the relationships between related languages and describe their evolution in time and space, and establish historical patterns in the development of languages. Using 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 associated 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 ideological and intellectual discoveries in the field of scientific philosophy and natural sciences. Meanwhile, it was these discoveries that made it possible to make the first universal classifications, to consider the whole, to determine the hierarchy of its parts and to assume that all this is the result of some general laws. Empirical comparison of facts inevitably led to the conclusion that behind external differences there must be hidden internal unity, in need of interpretation. The principle of interpretation for science of that time was historicism, that is, the recognition of the development of science over time, carried out naturally, and not by divine will. A new interpretation of the facts has occurred. This is no longer a “ladder of forms”, but a “chain of development”. Development itself was thought of in two versions: along an ascending line, from simple to complex and improved (more often) and less often as degradation from better downlink- for the worse

Comparative historical method in linguistics The comparative historical method in linguistics is one of the main ones and is a set of techniques that make it possible to study the relationships between related languages and describe 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 evidence of their common origin. The foundations of the comparative historical method were laid on the basis of 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 fields of linguistics. The comparative-historical method in linguistics is associated 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. Empirical comparison of facts inevitably led to the conclusion that behind external differences there must be hidden an internal unity that needs interpretation. The principle of interpretation for science of that time was historicism, that is, the recognition of the development of science over time, carried out naturally, and not by divine will. COMPARATIVE HISTORICAL METHOD IN THE FIELD OF GRAMMAR. The comparative historical method is based on a number of requirements, compliance with which increases the reliability of the conclusions obtained by this method. When comparing words and forms in related languages, preference is given to more archaic forms. A language is a collection of parts, ancient and new, formed at different times. For example, in the root of the Russian adjective new nov-n and v have been preserved from ancient times (cf. Lat. novus, Skt. navah), and the vowel o developed from the more ancient e, which changed into o before [v], followed by the vowel back row. Every language changes gradually as it develops. If there were no these changes, then languages going back to the same source (for example, Indo-European) would not differ from each other at all. Even closely related languages differ significantly from each other. For example, Russian and Ukrainian. During his independent existence each of these languages has undergone various changes that have led to more or less significant differences in the areas of phonetics, grammar, word formation and semantics. Already a simple comparison of the Russian words place, month, knife, juice with the Ukrainian misto, misyats, nizh, sik shows that in a number of cases the Russian vowels e and o will correspond to the Ukrainian i. Significant changes have also occurred in the semantic field. For example, the Ukrainian word misto given above means “city”, not “place”; The Ukrainian verb marvel means “I look”, not “I am surprised”. Much more complex changes can be found when comparing other Indo-European languages. These changes took place over many millennia, so that people who speak these languages, which are not as close as Russian and Ukrainian, have long ceased to understand each other. Precise application of the rules phonetic correspondences, according to which a sound that changes in a certain position in one word undergoes similar changes in the same conditions in other words. For example, the Old Church Slavonic combinations ra, la, re transform in modern Russian into -oro-, -olo-, -ere- (cf. kral - king, zlato - gold, breg - shore). Over the course of thousands of years, a large number of different phonetic changes occurred in the Indo-European languages, which, despite all their complexity, had a pronounced systemic nature. If, for example, a change in k in h occurred in the case of hand - pen, river - river, then it should appear in all other examples of this kind: dog - dog, cheek - cheek, pike - pike, etc. This pattern of phonetic changes in each language led to the emergence of strict phonetic correspondences between the sounds of individual Indo-European languages. Thus, the initial European bh [bх] in Slavic languages turned into a simple b, and in Latin it changed to f [f]. As a result, certain phonetic relationships were established between the initial Latin f and Slavic b. Latin language Russian language faba [faba] “bean” – bean fero [fero] “carry” – take fiber [fiber] “beaver” – beaver fii(imus) [fu:mus] “(we) were” – were, etc etc. In these examples, only the initial sounds of the given words were compared with each other. But the other sounds related to the root are also completely consistent with each other. For example, the Latin long [y:] coincides with the Russian ы not only in the root of the words f -imus - were-whether, but also in all other cases: Latin f - Russian you, Latin r d-ere [ru:dere] - shout , roar - Russian sob, etc. In some cases, we are faced with a simple coincidence in the sound of these words. (Lat. rana (frog), Russian wound) Let's take the German verb habe [ha:be] means “I have”. The Latin verb habeo [ha:beo:] will have the same meaning. In the form of the imperative mood, these verbs even completely coincide orthographically: habe! "have". It would seem that we have every reason to compare these words and their common origin. But in fact, this conclusion is erroneous. As a result of phonetic changes that occurred in the Germanic languages, the Latin c [k] in the German language began to correspond to h [x]. Latin language. German. collis [collis] Hals [hals] "neck" caput [kaput] Haupt [haupt] "head" cervus [kervus] Hirsch [hirsch] "deer" cornu [corn] Horn [horn] "horn" culmus [kulmus] Halm [ halm] “stem, straw” Here we have not random isolated coincidences, but a natural system of coincidences between initial sounds given Latin and German words. Thus, when comparing related words, one should rely not on their purely external sound similarity, but on that strict system of phonetic correspondences that was established as a result of changes in the sound structure that occurred in individual languages historically related to each other. Words that sound exactly the same in two related languages, if they are not included in the established series of correspondences, cannot be recognized as related to each other. And vice versa, words that are very different in their sound appearance may turn out to be words common origin, if only their comparison reveals strict phonetic correspondences. Knowledge of phonetic patterns gives scientists the opportunity to restore the more ancient sound of a word, and comparison with related Indo-European forms very often clarifies the issue of the origin of the analyzed words and allows them to establish their etymology. Thus, we are convinced that phonetic changes occur naturally. The same pattern characterizes word formation processes. Analysis of word-formation series and suffixal alternations that exist or existed in ancient times is one of the most important research techniques with the help of which scientists manage to penetrate the most intimate secrets of the origin of a word. The use of the comparative historical method is due to the absolute nature language sign, that is, the absence of a natural connection between the sound of a word and its meaning. Russian wolf, Lithuanian vitkas, English wulf, German Wolf, Skt. vrkah indicate the material proximity of the languages being compared, but does not explain why this phenomenon of objective reality (wolf) is expressed by one or another sound complex. As a result language changes a word is transformed not only externally, but also internally, when not only the phonetic appearance of the word changes, but also its meaning, its meaning. And here is how the word Ivan has changed, which comes from the ancient Jewish name Yehohanan in different languages: in Greek-Byzantine - Ioannes in German - Johann in Finnish and Estonian - Johan in Spanish - Juan in Italian - Giovanni in English - John in Russian – Ivan in Polish – Jan in French – Zhann in Georgian – Ivane in Armenian – Hovhannes in Portuguese – Joan in Bulgarian – He. Let's trace the history of another name, also coming from the East - Joseph. in Greek-Byzantine – Joseph in German – Joseph in Spanish – Jose in Italian – Giuseppe in English – Joseph in Russian – Osip in Polish – Joseph (Józef) in Turkish – Yusuf (Yusuf) in French – Joseph in Portuguese – Juse. When these substitutions were tested on other names, the result invariably remained the same. Apparently the matter is not a matter of mere chance, but of some kind of law: it operates in these languages, forcing them in all cases to equally change the same sounds coming from other words. The same pattern can be observed with other words (common nouns). The French word juri (jury), Spanish jurar (hurar, swear), Italian jure - right, English judge (judge, judge, expert). . The similarity of semantic types is especially pronounced in the process of word formation itself. For example, a large number of words with the meaning flour are formed from verbs meaning to grind, crush, grind. Russian – grind, – grind Serbo-Croatian – fly, grind – mlevo, ground grain Lithuanian – malti [malti] grind – miltai [miltai] flour German – mahlen [ma:len] grind Mahlen – grind, – Mehl [me:l] flour Such series are called semantic; their analysis makes it possible to introduce some elements of systematicity into such a difficult area of etymological research as the study of word meanings. The basis of the comparative-historical method can be the possibility of the collapse of one original linguistic community, a common ancestor language. Language families arose and developed because some languages seem to be capable of giving rise to others, and the newly appeared languages necessarily retain some features common to the languages from which they originated. Very often, the kinship between languages corresponds to the kinship between the peoples speaking these languages; so at one time Russian, Ukrainian and Belarusian peoples descended from common Slavic ancestors. It also happens that peoples have common languages, but there is no kinship between the peoples themselves. In ancient times, the kinship between languages coincided with the kinship between their owners. On at this stage development, even related languages are more different from each other than, for example, 500-700 years ago. All indications regarding each element under consideration in several related languages should be taken into account. It may be a coincidence that only two languages match. The coincidence of the Latin sapo "soap" and the Mordovian saron "soap" does not yet indicate the relationship of these languages. Existing in related languages various processes(analogy, change in morphological structure, reduction of unstressed vowels, etc.) can be reduced to certain types. The typicality of these processes is one of the necessary conditions for the application of the comparative historical method. The comparative historical method includes a whole range of techniques. First, a pattern of sound correspondences is established. By comparing, for example, the Latin root host-, Old Russian gost-, Gothic gast-, scientists have established a correspondence between h in Latin and g, d in Central Russian and Gothic. The voiced stop in the Slavic and Germanic languages, and the voiceless spirant in Latin corresponded to the aspirated stop (gh) in Central Slavic. 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. In the above example, the primary sound is o, which in Germanic languages coincided with the short a. Relative chronology is very important for establishing sound correspondences in the absence or small number of monuments of ancient writing. Pace linguistic changes fluctuates within very wide limits. Therefore, it is very important to determine: 1) the temporal sequence of linguistic phenomena; 2) combination of phenomena in time. It is very difficult to determine the period of history of the base language. Therefore, supporters of comparative historical linguistics, according to the degree of scientific reliability, distinguish two time slices - the most late period the base language (the period before the collapse of the proto-language) and some extremely early period achieved by reconstruction. In relation to the language system under consideration, external and internal criteria are distinguished. The leading role belongs to intralinguistic criteria, based on the establishment of cause-and-effect relationships; if the reasons for changes are clarified, then the temporal sequence of related facts is determined. Restoration of the original form occurs in a certain sequence. First, data from one language, but belonging to different eras, are compared, then data from closely related languages are used, after which data from other languages belonging to the same language family are turned to. The investigation carried out in this sequence allows us to identify the existing correspondences between related languages. 3. METHODS OF RECONSTRUCTION OF THE BASE LANGUAGE. Currently, there are two methods of reconstruction - operational and interpretive. The operational one delineates specific relationships in the material being compared. The interpretative aspect involves filling the correspondence formulas with specific semantic content. The Indo-European content of the head of the family *p ter- (Latin pater, French pere, Gothic fodor, English father, German Vater) denoted not only the parent, but also had a social function, that is, the word *p ter could be used to refer to a deity as the highest of all heads of the family. Reconstruction is the filling of the reconstruction formula with a certain linguistic reality of the past. The starting point from which the study of language reference begins is the base language, restored using the reconstruction formula. The disadvantage of reconstruction is its “planar nature”. For example, when restoring diphthongs in the Common Slavic language, which later changed into monophthongs (ои > и; еi > i; оi, ai > e, etc.), various phenomena in the field of monophthongization of diphthongs and diphthong combinations (combination of vowels with nasals and smooth ones) did not occur simultaneously, but sequentially. The next disadvantage of reconstruction is its straightforwardness, that is, it is not taken into account complex processes differentiation and integration of closely related languages and dialects, which occurred with varying degrees of intensity. The “planar” and rectilinear 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 languages in parallel, diphthongization of long vowels occurred: Old German hus, Old English hus “house”; modern German Haus, English house. In close interaction with external reconstruction is the technique of internal reconstruction. Its premise is a comparison of facts of one language that exist “synchronously” in this language in order to identify more ancient forms of this language. For example, a reduction in the number of cases in the declension system is sometimes established through internal reconstruction within one language. Modern Russian has six cases, while Old Russian had seven. The presence of the vocative case in the Old Russian language is confirmed by comparison with case system Indo-European languages (Lithuanian, Sanskrit). A variation of the method of internal reconstruction of a language is the “philological method,” which boils down to the analysis of early written texts in a given language in order to discover prototypes of later language forms. It is limited in nature, since in most languages of the world written monuments, located in chronological order, are absent, and the method does not go beyond one linguistic tradition. At different levels language system reconstruction possibilities manifest themselves to varying degrees. The reconstruction in the field of phonology and morphology is the most substantiated and evidence-based, due to a rather limited set of reconstructed units. The total number of phonemes in different places on the globe does not exceed 80. Phonological reconstruction becomes possible by establishing phonetic patterns that exist in the development of individual languages. Correspondences between languages are subject to firm, clearly formulated "sound laws". These laws establish sound transitions that took place in the distant past under certain conditions. Therefore, in linguistics we now speak 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, what signs can characterize the sound system of the base language. 4. COMPARATIVE HISTORICAL METHOD IN THE FIELD OF SYNTAX The methodology for applying the comparative historical method of linguistics in the field of syntax is less developed, since it is very difficult to reconstruct syntactic archetypes. A certain syntactic model can be restored with some degree of reliability, but its material word content cannot be reconstructed, if by this we mean words found in the same syntactic structure. The best results are obtained by reconstructing phrases filled with words that have the same grammatical characteristic. The way to reconstruct syntactic models is as follows.  Identification of binomial phrases traced in their historical development in the languages being compared.  Definition of the general model of education.  Detection of the interdependence of syntactic and morphological features of these models.  After reconstructing the models of word combinations, they begin research to identify archetypes and larger syntactic unities.  Based on the material of Slavic languages, it is possible to establish the relationship of constructions of equal meaning (nominative, instrumental predicative, nominal compound predicate with and without copula, etc.) to identify more ancient constructions and resolve the issue of their origin.  Consistent comparison of the structures of sentences and phrases in related languages makes it possible to establish the general structural types of these constructions. A turning point in the development of the comparative-historical method in the field of syntax was the work of Russian linguists A. A. Potebnya “From notes on Russian grammar” and F.E. Korsch "Methods of relative subordination", (1877). A.A. Potebnya identifies two stages in the development of a sentence - nominal and verbal. At the nominal stage, the predicate was expressed by nominal categories, that is, constructions were common that corresponded to the modern he is a fisherman, in which the noun fisherman contains the characteristics of a noun and the characteristics of a verb. At this stage there was no differentiation of noun and adjective. For early stage The nominal structure of the sentence was characterized by the concreteness of perception of the phenomena of objective reality. This holistic perception found its expression in the nominal structure of the language. At the verb stage, the predicate is expressed by a finite verb, and all members of the sentence are determined by their connection with the predicate. In the same direction, F.E. developed the problems of comparative historical syntax. Korsh, who gave brilliant analysis relative clauses , the methods of relative subordination in a wide variety of languages (Indo-European, Turkic, Semitic) are strikingly similar. Currently, in research on comparative-historical syntax, primary attention is paid to the analysis of means of expressing syntactic connections and the areas of application of these means in related languages. In the field of comparative-historical Indo-European syntax there are a number of indisputable achievements: the theory of development from parataxis to hypotaxis; the doctrine of two kinds of Indo-European names and their meaning; the position about the autonomous nature of the word and the predominance of opposition and adjacency over other means of syntactic communication, the position that in the Indo-European base language the opposition of verbal stems had a specific, rather than temporal, meaning. 5. RECONSTRUCTION OF ARCHAIC MEANINGS OF WORDS The least developed branch of comparative historical linguistics is the reconstruction of archaic meanings of words. This is explained by the insufficiently clear definition of the concept of “word meaning”, as well as by the fact that the vocabulary of any language changes much faster compared to the system of word-formation and inflectional formats. The true study of etymology as a science began with the substantiation of the principle of consistency between the semantic correspondences of words in a group of related languages. Researchers have always attached great importance to the study of vocabulary as the most dynamic part of the language, reflecting in its development various changes in the life of the people. In every language, along with original words, there are borrowed words. Native words are those that a given language inherited from the base language. These include categories of words such as basic pronouns, numerals, verbs, names of body parts, and kinship terms. When restoring the archaic meanings of a word, original words are used, the change in meanings of which is influenced by intralingual and extralinguistic factors. In most cases, it is external extralinguistic factors that influence the change of a word. Studying a word is impossible without knowledge of the history of a given people, its customs, culture, etc. Russian city, Old Slavonic grad, Lithuanian ga das “wattle fence”, “fence” go back to the same concept of “fortification, fortified place” and are associated with verb to fence, fence. Russian cattle is etymologically related to the Gothic skatts “money”, the German Schatz “treasure” (for these peoples cattle constituted the main wealth, was a means of exchange, that is, money). Ignorance of history can distort the idea of the origin and movement of words. Russian silk coincides with English silke, Danish silke in the same meaning. Therefore, it was believed that the word silk was borrowed from Germanic languages, and later etymological studies show that this word was borrowed into Russian from the east, and through it passed into the Germanic languages. One of the most developed proto-language schemes is the reconstruction of the Indo-European base language. The attitude of scientists to the proto-linguistic basis was different: some saw it as final goal comparative historical studies (A. Schleicher), others refused to recognize any historical significance for it (A. Maillet, N.Ya. Marr). According to Marr, the proto-language is a scientific fiction. In modern scientific and historical research, the scientific and cognitive significance of the proto-language hypothesis is increasingly being affirmed. The works of domestic researchers emphasize that the reconstruction of the proto-linguistic scheme should be considered as creating a starting point in the study of the history of languages. This is the scientific and historical significance of reconstructing the base language of any language family, since, being a starting point at a certain chronological level, the reconstructed proto-language scheme will make it possible to more clearly imagine the development of a specific group of languages or an individual language. CONCLUSION The comparative-historical method in linguistics has many advantages:  relative simplicity of the procedure (if it is known that the morphemes being compared are related);  quite often the reconstruction is extremely simplified, or even already represented by part of the compared elements;  the possibility of ordering the stages of development of one or several phenomena in a relatively chronological manner;  priority of form over function, despite the fact that the first part remains more stable than the last. However, this method also has its difficulties and disadvantages (or limitations), which are associated mainly with the factor of “linguistic” time:  a given language used for comparison may differ from the original base language or another related language, for such a number of steps of “linguistic” time that most of the inherited linguistic elements are lost and, therefore, the given language itself drops out of comparison or becomes unreliable material for it;  the impossibility of reconstructing those phenomena whose antiquity exceeds the temporal depth of a given language - material for comparison becomes extremely unreliable due to profound changes;  special difficulty represent borrowings in a language (in other languages the number of borrowed words exceeds the number of original ones). Comparative-historical linguistics cannot rely solely on the provided “rules” - it is often discovered that the problem is one of the exceptional ones and requires recourse to non-standard methods of analysis or is solved only with a certain probability. The comparative historical study of languages has not only scientific and educational significance, but also great scientific and methodological value, which lies in the fact that the study reconstructs the parent language. This proto-language as a starting point helps to understand the history of the development of a particular language.

Introduction Throughout the 19th century, comparative historical linguistics was the dominant branch of linguistics; Comparative historical linguistics deals with establishing the degree of relationship between languages (constructing a genealogical classification of languages), reconstructing proto-languages, studying diachronic processes in the history of languages, their groups and families, and the etymology of words; Comparative historical linguistics appeared after the discovery of Sanskrit, the literary language, by Europeans. Ancient India 2

The origin and stages of development of the comparative historical method in linguistics William Jones (Sir William Jones: 1746 -1794) British (Welsh) philologist, orientalist (Indologist), translator, founder of comparative historical linguistics. ..." The Sanskrit language, whatever its antiquity, has a wonderful 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 the roots of verbs, as well as in the forms of grammar, which could not have been generated by chance, the kinship is so strong that no philologist who would study these three languages could fail to believe that they all came from one common source, which perhaps no longer exists. There is a similar justification, although not so convincing, for supposing that both the Gothic and Celtic languages, although mixed with completely different dialects, were of the same origin as Sanskrit...” In 1786, W. Jones proposed a new theory of linguistic kinship - about the origin of languages and common proto-language 3

The origin and stages of development of the comparative historical method in linguistics Franz Bopp (Franz Bopp: 1791 - 1867) German linguist, founder of comparative linguistics “On the system of conjugations of the Sanskrit language in comparison with those of Greek, Latin, Persian and Germanic languages” (1816). F. Bopp studied the conjugation of basic verbs in Sanskrit, Greek, Latin and Gothic using a comparative method. F. Bopp compared both roots and inflections (verb and case endings), since he believed: “... to establish the relationship of languages, correspondence only with roots is not enough, similarity of grammatical forms is also necessary...” In the work “On the system of conjugations...” F. Bopp : - deduces the rules for constructing words, - restores the appearance of the Indo-European language based on a comparison of words from different languages, - searches for pro-forms. Having studied the above-mentioned languages, F. Bopp proved their relationship and identified them as a special language family- Indo-Germanic. In 1833, F. Bopp wrote the first “Comparative Grammar of the Indo-Germanic Languages” 4

The origin and stages of development of the comparative historical method in linguistics Rasmus Christian Rask (Rasmus Christian Rask: 1787 - 1832) Danish linguist, one of the founders of Indo-European studies, comparative-historical linguistics “Research in the field of the ancient Nordic language, or the origin of the Icelandic language” (1818) “...lexical correspondences between languages are not reliable, grammatical ones are much more important, since borrowing inflections, and in particular inflections, never happens...” R Rascom described the method of “expanding circles,” according to which, in order to establish the kinship of languages, one must go from comparing the closest related languages to the kinship of groups and families. R. Rusk identified several groups of words, by comparing which one can establish the kinship of languages: 1) kinship terms mother – mother – Mutter – madre (Italian, Spanish) – māter (Latin); 2) names of domestic animals: cow – kra (Czech) – krowa (Polish) – cоw va 3) names of body parts: nose – nos (Czech, Polish) – nose (English) – Nase (German) – nez (French) – naso (Italian) – nariz (Spanish) – nāris (Latin) – nosis (lit.); 4) numerals (from 1 to 10): ten – ten (English) – zehn (German) – dix (French) – dieci (Italian) – diez (Spanish) – δέκα (Greek) 5

The origin and stages of development of the comparative historical method in linguistics Jacob Ludwig Karl Grimm (1785 - 1863) German philologist According to Grimm, “...in order to establish the relationship of languages, it is necessary to study their history...” He noted that each language develops in over a long period of time. In the history of the development of human language, he distinguished three periods: 1) the ancient period - the creation, growth, formation of roots and words; 2) the middle period - the flowering of inflection that has reached perfection; 3) new period the stage of striving for clarity of thought, analyticity, refusal of inflection. Author of the first historical grammar“German Grammar” (1819 - 1837). Grimm explores in it the history of the development of all Germanic languages, starting from the most ancient written monuments and up to the 19th century. 6

The origin and stages of development of the comparative historical method in linguistics Alexander Khristoforovich Vostokov (Alexander-Woldemar Ostenek: 1781 - 1864) Russian philologist, poet, Balto-German origin. He laid the foundations of comparative Slavic linguistics in Russia “Discourse on the Slavic Language” (1820). According to A. Kh. Vostokov, “... to establish the relationship of languages, it is necessary to compare data from written monuments of dead languages with data from living languages and dialects...” In the work “Discourse about the Slavic language” A. Kh. Vostokov identified three periods in the history of Slavic languages: ancient (IX - XII centuries), middle (XIV - XV centuries) and new (from the XV century). In the same work, he established regular phonetic correspondences between the vowel sounds of Slavic languages and discovered nasal vowels in Old Church Slavonic. 7

The origin and stages of development of the comparative historical method in linguistics The journal “Philological Notes”, published since 1860 in Voronezh under the editorship of A. A. Khovansky and specially dedicated to the study of this new back in the middle of the 19th century, had a significant influence on the formation of the comparative method in Russian linguistics directions in the science of language. Great merits in clarifying and strengthening this method on a large comparative material of Indo-European languages belong to Augustus-Friedrich Pott, who gave comparative etymological tables of Indo-European languages. The results of almost two centuries of research into languages using the method of comparative historical linguistics are summarized in the scheme of the Genealogical Classification of Languages. 8

Techniques of the comparative historical method in linguistics For comparative linguistics, language is important as a measure of time (“linguistic” time). The minimum measure of “language” time is the quantum of language change, that is, the unit of deviation of the language state A 1 from the language state A 2. Any units of language can act as a quantum of language change, if only they are capable of recording language changes in time (phonemes, morphemes, words (lexemes), syntactic constructions), but special meaning purchased these linguistic units, as sounds (and later phonemes); based on minimal shifts ("steps") of the type (sound x > y), chains of historical sequences were built (such as a 1 > a 2 > a 3 ... > an, where a 1 is the earliest of the reconstructed elements, and an is the last time, that is, modern) and matrices of sound correspondences were formed (such as: the sound x of language A 1 corresponds to the sound of language B, the sound z of language C, etc.) With the development of phonology, especially in that version where the level of phonological differentials is distinguished characteristics (DP), it becomes relevant to take into account even more convenient quanta of linguistic changes in the DP themselves (for example, a change d > t is explained not as a shift by one phoneme, but as a softer shift by one DP; voicedness > deafness). In this case, we can talk about the phoneme as the minimum linguistic fragment (space) on which a temporary shift in the composition of the DP can be recorded.

Techniques of the comparative historical method in linguistics The comparative historical method is based on a number of requirements: 1. When comparing words and forms in related languages, preference is given to more archaic forms. A language is a collection of parts, ancient and new, formed at different times. Every language changes as it develops. Significant differences even in closely related languages. Example: Russian: : Ukrainian (discrepancies in the field of phonetics, grammar, word formation and semantics) place: : misto, knife: : nizh Reader: : reader, listener: : listener, doer: : diyach (cf. Russian weaver, talker) Misto – in the meaning of “city”, and not “place”, I marvel – in the meaning of “I look”, and not “I am surprised” 10

2. Accurate application of the rules of phonetic correspondences, according to which a sound that changes in a certain position in one word undergoes similar changes in the same conditions in other words. For example, the Old Church Slavonic combinations ra, la, re transform in modern Russian into -oro-, -olo-, -ere- (cf. kral - king, zlato - gold, breg - shore). The pattern of phonetic changes in each language led to the fact that strict phonetic correspondences arose between the sounds of individual Indo-European languages: initial European bh [bh] -> in Slavic languages b -> in Latin f [f] >> Phonetic relationships between f [f] and b: Latin Russian language faba [faba] “bean” – bean fero [fero] “carry” – take fiber [fiber] “beaver” – beaver fii(imus) [fu: mus] “(we) were” – were, etc. 11

As a result of phonetic changes that occurred in the Germanic languages, the Latin s(k) in the German language began to correspond to h [x]: Latin collis [collis] caput [caput] cervus [kervus] cornu [corn] German language Hals [hals] " neck" Haupt [haupt] "head" Hirsch [hirsch] "deer" Horn [horn] "horn"! Not all words that sound the same or almost the same in two related languages reflect ancient phonetic correspondences. Sometimes we come across a simple coincidence in the sound of these words. Example: Latin rana [ra: on] – frog: : Russian rana Thus, when comparing related words, one should rely not on purely external sound similarity, but on a strict system of phonetic correspondences, which was established as a result of changes in the sound structure that occurred in certain historically languages related to each other. 12

3. The use of the comparative historical method is due to the absolute nature of the linguistic sign, that is, the absence of a natural connection between the sound of a word and its meaning. Russian wolf, Lithuanian vitkas, English wulf, German Wolf, Skt. vrkah testify to the material proximity of the languages being compared, but do not say anything about why this phenomenon of objective reality (the wolf) is expressed by one or another sound complex. Let's trace the history of the names Ivan and Joseph: in Greek-Byzantine in German in Spanish in Italian in English in Russian in Polish in French in Portuguese - Ioannes; Joseph - Johann; Joseph - Juan; Jose - Giovanni; Giuseppe - John; Joseph - Ivan; Osip - Jan; Joseph - Jeanne; Joseph - Joan; Juse French word juri (jury), Spanish jurar (hurar, swear), Italian jure - right, English judge (judge, judge, expert) 13

The striking similarity of semantic types is manifested in the very process of word formation. For example, a large number of words with the meaning flour are formed from verbs meaning to grind, crush, grind. Russian – grind, – grinding Serbo-Croatian – fly, grind, – mlevo, ground grain Lithuanian – malti [malti] grind, – miltai [miltai] flour German – mahlen [ma: flax] grind, – grinding, – Mehl [me: l ] flour other Indian – pinasti [pinasti] crushes, crushes, pistam [pistam] flour Semantic series 14

4. The basis of the comparative historical method can be the possibility of the collapse of one original linguistic community, a common language - the ancestor 5. All evidence regarding each element under consideration in several related languages should be taken into account. It may be a coincidence that only two languages match. Example: matching lat. sapo “soap” and Mordovian saron “soap” do not yet indicate the relationship of these languages. 6. Various processes existing in related languages (analogy, change in morphological structure, reduction of unstressed vowels, etc.) can be reduced to certain types. The typicality of these processes is one of the necessary conditions for the application of the comparative historical method. 15

Conclusion The comparative historical method is based on comparing languages. Comparison of the state of the language in different periods helps create the history of the language. The material for comparison is its most stable elements. The subsystem of one language - phonological, morphological, syntactic, semantic - is compared with the subsystem of another language in order to establish kinship. The comparative historical method includes a whole range of techniques. First, data from the same language, but belonging to different eras, are compared, then data from closely related languages are used. After this, data from other languages belonging to the same language family are accessed. 16

COMPARATIVE HISTORICAL METHOD

IN LINGUISTICS
CONTENT

INTRODUCTION 3

1. SOME STAGES OF DEVELOPING A COMPARATIVE

HISTORICAL METHOD IN LINGUISTICS 7

2. COMPARATIVE HISTORICAL METHOD

IN THE FIELD OF GRAMMAR. 12

3. METHODS OF LANGUAGE RECONSTRUCTION – BASICS 23

4. COMPARATIVE HISTORICAL METHOD IN

AREAS OF SYNTAX 26

5. RECONSTRUCTION OF ARCHAIC MEANINGS OF WORDS 29

CONCLUSION 31

BIBLIOGRAPHY 33

INTRODUCTION

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

Along with living ones, they are occupied by “dead” languages, that is, those that no one speaks today. We know quite a few of them. Some have disappeared from human memory; A rich literature has been preserved about them, grammars and dictionaries have reached us, which means that the meaning of individual words has not been forgotten. There is just no one who now considers them their native languages. This is “Latin,” the language of Ancient Rome; such is the ancient Greek language, such is the ancient Indian "Sanskrit". One of the languages closest to us is “Church Slavonic” or “Old Bulgarian”.

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

Comparing the most ancient linguistic forms with the archaic forms of related languages, or using the comparative historical method, often leads to revealing the secrets of the origin of the word. (3, 6, 12)

Genetic research represents a set of techniques for studying the history of both individual languages and groups of related languages. The basis for genetic comparison of linguistic phenomena is a certain number of genetically identical units (genetic identities), by which we mean the common origin of language elements. For example, e in Old Church Slavonic and other Russians - sky, in Latin - nebula"fog", German - Nebel"fog", ancient Indian - nabhah"cloud" roots restored to 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. (4, 8, 9)

The comparative-historical method in linguistics is associated 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 ideological and intellectual discoveries in the field of scientific philosophy and natural sciences. Meanwhile, it was these discoveries that made it possible to make the first universal classifications, to consider the whole, to determine the hierarchy of its parts and to assume that all this is the result of some general laws. Empirical comparison of facts inevitably led to the conclusion that behind external differences there must be hidden an internal unity that needs interpretation. The principle of interpretation for science of that time was historicism, that is, the recognition of the development of science over time, carried out naturally, and not by divine will. A new interpretation of the facts has occurred. This is no longer a “ladder of forms”, but a “chain of development”. Development itself was thought of in two versions: along an ascending line, from simple to complex and improved (more often) and less often as degradation from better along a descending line - to worse (3, 10).

1. SOME STAGES IN THE DEVELOPMENT OF COMPARATIVE HISTORICAL METHOD IN LINGUISTICS

The science of languages not only experienced the fruitful influence of the general methodology of the sciences, but also itself took an active part in the development of general ideas. A major role was played by Herder’s work “Studies on the Origin of Language” (1972), which, along with his article “On the Ages of Language,” was one of the most serious approaches to the future of historical linguistics. Herder opposed the dissemination of theses about the originality of the language, his divine origin and immutability. He became one of the first heralds of historicism in linguistics.

According to his teaching, natural laws determined the need for the emergence of language and its further development; A language, connected in its development with culture, improves in the course of its development, as does society. 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.

In linguistics, the relationship of languages is a purely linguistic concept. The kinship of languages is not determined by the concept of racial and ethnic community. In the history of Russian progressive thought N.G. Chernyshevsky noted that the classification of language has little overlap with the division of people by race. He expressed a fair idea that the language of every people is flexible, rich, and beautiful.

When comparing languages, you can discover easily perceptible correspondences that catch the eye even of the uninitiated. It is easy for a person who knows one of the Romance languages to guess the meaning of French - un , une, Italian – uno , una, Spanish – uno , una – one. The correspondences will be less clear if we consider languages more distant in time and space. There will be only partial matches that will not yield anything for the researcher. More than one should be compared special case with other special cases. Since each fact of a language belongs to the entire language as a whole, the subsystem of one language - phonological, morphological, syntactic, semantic - is compared with the subsystem of another language. In order to establish whether the languages being compared are related or not, that is, whether they come from one common language of a certain language family, whether they are in a relationship of partial (allogenetic) relationship or are not related to each other in any way by origin (2, 4).

Ideas of linguistic kinship had been put forward before (16th century “On the kinship of language” by Gwillelm Postellus), but they did not produce results, since not only related languages were involved in the comparison. Very big role Comparative tables of the languages of Northern Europe played a role in the development of the comparative historical method in linguistics, North Caucasus, thanks to which a classification of the Uralic and Altai languages was created, albeit in a preliminary version.

The merit of highlighting linguistics as new science historical cycle, belongs to Humboldt (“On the comparative study of languages, in relation to different eras their development", 1820).

Humboldt's merit was the identification of linguistics as a new science of the historical cycle - comparative anthropology. At the same time, he understood the tasks extremely broadly: “... language and the goals of man in general, comprehended through it, the human race in its progressive development and individual peoples are the four objects that, in their mutual connection, should be studied in comparative linguistics.” Paying great attention to such key problems for comparative historical linguistics as internal form, the connection between sound and meaning, linguistic typology, etc. Humboldt, unlike many specialists in the field of comparative historical linguistics, emphasized the connection of language with thinking. Thus, the principle of historicism in linguistics received an understanding that goes far beyond the framework of comparative historical grammars.

Science owes Ball to the creation of the first comparative-historical grammar of Indo-European languages (1833-1849), which opened a series of similar grammars of large language families; development of a method for consistent comparison of forms in related languages.

Of particular importance was the appeal to Sanskrit, which in space and time was the most distant from European languages, had no contacts with them in its history, and, nevertheless, preserved its ancient state with particular completeness.

Another scientist, Rusk, developed a technique for analyzing grammatical forms that are correlated with each other and demonstrating various degrees of relationship between languages. Differentiation of kinship by degree of proximity was a necessary prerequisite for constructing a diagram of the historical development of related languages.

Such a scheme was proposed by Grimmois (30-40s of the 19th century), who examined historically three stages of the development of Germanic languages (ancient, middle and modern) - from Gothic to New English. At this time, the formation of comparative historical linguistics, its principles, methods and research techniques takes place!

Comparative historical linguistics, at least from the 20-30s. XIX century clearly focuses on two principles - “comparative” and “historical”. Sometimes preference is given to the “historical” beginning, sometimes to the “comparative” one. Historical – defines the goal (history of language, including the pre-literate era). With this understanding of the role of the “historical”, another principle – “comparative” rather determines the affinity with the help of which goals are achieved historical research language or languages. In this sense, research in the genre of “history of a specific language” is typical, in which external comparison (with related languages) can be practically absent, as if relating to the prehistoric period of development of a given language and replaced by internal comparison of earlier facts with later ones; one dialect with another or with a standard form of a language, etc. But such internal comparison often turns out to be disguised.

In the works of other researchers, it is comparison that is emphasized, the focus is on the relationship of the compared elements that form the main object of research, and the historical conclusions from it remain unemphasized, postponed for next research. In this case, comparison acts not only as a means, but also as a goal, but it does not follow from this that such a comparison does not produce results valuable for the history of language.

The object of comparative historical linguistics is language in the aspect of its development, that is, that type of change that correlates directly with time or with its transformed forms.

For comparative linguistics, language is important as a measure of time (“linguistic” time), and the fact that time can be changed by language (and its various elements, and in different ways each time) is directly related to the broad problem of forms of expressing time.

The minimum measure of “language” time is the quantum of language change, that is, the unit of deviation of the language state A 1 from language condition A 2 . Language time stops if there are no language changes, at least zero. Any units of language can act as a quantum of linguistic change, if only they are capable of recording linguistic changes in time (phonemes, morphemes, words (lexemes), syntactic constructions), but such linguistic units as sounds (and later phonemes) have acquired special significance ); based on minimal shifts ("steps") of which type (sound X >at) chains of historical sequences were built (such as A 1 >A 2 >A 3 …>A n, where A 1 is the earliest of the reconstructed elements, and A n – latest in time, that is, modern) and matrices of sound correspondences were formed (such as sound X language A 1 corresponds to sound at at the tongue IN, sound z at the tongue WITH and so on.)

With the development of phonology, especially in its variant where the level of phonological differential features - DP is highlighted, it becomes relevant to take into account even more convenient quantum of linguistic changes in the DP themselves (for example, a change d > t is explained not as a shift by one phoneme, but as a softer shift per DP; voicedness > deafness). In this case, we can talk about the phoneme as the minimum linguistic fragment (space) on which a temporary shift in the composition of the DP can be recorded.

This situation reveals one of the main features of comparative historical linguistics, most clearly manifested in comparative historical grammar. The clearer the morphemic structure of a language, the more complete and reliable the comparative historical interpretation of this language turns out to be and the greater the contribution this language makes to the comparative historical grammar of a given group of languages (8, 10, 14).

2. COMPARATIVE HISTORICAL METHOD IN THE FIELD OF GRAMMAR.

The comparative historical method is based on a number of requirements, compliance with which increases the reliability of the conclusions obtained by this method.

1. When comparing words and forms in related languages, preference is given to more archaic forms. A language is a collection of parts, ancient and new, formed at different times.

For example, in the root of the Russian adjective new new - n And V preserved from ancient times (cf. lat. novus, skr. navah), and the vowel O developed from an older one e, which changed in O before [v], followed by a back vowel.

Every language changes gradually as it develops. If there were no these changes, then languages going back to the same source (for example, Indo-European) would not differ from each other at all. However, in fact, we see that even closely related languages differ significantly from each other. Take Russian and Ukrainian, for example. During the period of its independent existence, each of these languages underwent various changes, which 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 correspond to Ukrainian i .

Similar discrepancies can be observed in the field of word formation: Russian words reader , listener , figure , sower act with the suffix of the character - tel, and the corresponding words in the Ukrainian language are reader , listener , diyach , With icell– have a suffix – h(cf. Russian - weaver , talker etc.).

Significant changes have also occurred in the semantic field. For example, the above Ukrainian word misto it means "city" and not "place"; Ukrainian verb I marvel means “I look”, not “I’m surprised”.

Much more complex changes can be found when comparing other Indo-European languages. These changes took place over many millennia, so that people who speak these languages, which are not as close as Russian and Ukrainian, have long ceased to understand each other. (5, 12).

2. Precise application of the rules of phonetic correspondences, according to which a sound that changes in a certain position in one word undergoes similar changes in the same conditions in other words.

For example, Old Slavonic combinations ra , la , re pass in modern Russian into -oro- , -olo- , -ere-(cf. steal – king , gold – gold , breg – shore).

Over the course of thousands of years, a large number of different phonetic changes occurred in the Indo-European languages, which, despite all their complexity, were of a pronounced systemic nature. If, for example, a change To V h happened in case hand - pen , river - small river then it should appear in all other examples of this kind: dog - dog , cheek - cheek , pike - pike etc.

This pattern of phonetic changes in each language led to the emergence of strict phonetic correspondences between the sounds of individual Indo-European languages.

So, the initial European bh[bh] in Slavic languages it became simple b , and in Latin it changed to f[f]. As a result, between initial Latin f and Slavic b certain phonetic relationships were established.

Latin Russian language

faba[faba] "bean" – bean

fero[fero] “carrying” – I'll take it

fiber[fiber] "beaver" – beaver

fii(imus)[fu:mus] “(we) were” – were etc.

In these examples, only the initial sounds of the given words were compared with each other. But the other sounds related to the root are also completely consistent with each other. For example, Latin long [y: ] coincides with Russian s not only at the root of words f-imus – were , but also in all other cases: Latin f - Russian You , Latin rd-ere [ru:dere] – scream, roar – Russian sob and etc.

Not all words that sound the same or almost the same in two related languages reflect ancient phonetic correspondences. In some cases, we are faced with a simple coincidence in the sound of these words. It is unlikely that anyone will seriously prove that Latin word rana [wound], frog has a common origin with the Russian word wound. The complete sound coincidence of these words is just the result of chance.

Let's take a German verb habe [ha:be] means “I have.” The Latin verb will have the same meaning habeo [ha:beo:]. In the form of the imperative mood, these verbs even completely coincide orthographically: habe! "have". It would seem that we have every reason to compare these words and their common origin. But in fact, this conclusion is erroneous.

As a result of phonetic changes that occurred in the Germanic languages, Latin With[To] in German it began to correspond h[X] .

Latin language. German.

collis[collis] Hals[khals] "neck"

caput[kaput] Haupt[haupt] "head"

cervus[kervus] Hirsch[hirsch] "deer"

cornu[corn] Horn[horn] "horn"

culmus[culmus] Halm[halm] "stem, straw"

Here we have not random isolated coincidences, but a natural system of coincidences between the initial sounds of the given Latin and German words.

Thus, when comparing related words, one should rely not on their purely external sound similarity, but on that strict system of phonetic correspondences that was established as a result of changes in the sound structure that occurred in individual languages historically related to each other.

Words that sound exactly the same in two related languages, if they are not included in the established series of correspondences, cannot be recognized as related to each other. Conversely, words that are very different in their sound appearance may turn out to be words of common origin, if only strict phonetic correspondences are revealed when comparing them. Knowledge of phonetic patterns gives scientists the opportunity to restore the more ancient sound of a word, and comparison with related Indo-European forms very often clarifies the issue of the origin of the analyzed words and allows them to establish their etymology.

Thus, we are convinced that phonetic changes occur naturally. The same pattern characterizes word formation processes.

Each word, during its etymological analysis, must necessarily be assigned to one or another word-formation type. For example, the word ramen can be included in the following word-formation series:

sow – seed

know – banner

halfway"blaze" - flame, flame

o (army"plow" – ramen etc.

The formation of suffixes is of the same typical nature. If we, for example, simply compared the words loaf And while away, then such a comparison would hardly convince anyone. But when we managed to discover a whole series of words in which the suffixes - V- And - T- are in a state of regular alternations, the validity of the above comparison has received a fairly reliable justification.

Analysis of word-formation series and suffixal alternations that exist or existed in ancient times is one of the most important research techniques with the help of which scientists manage to penetrate the most intimate secrets of the origin of a word. (10, 8, 5, 12)

3. The use of the comparative-historical method is due to the absolute nature of the linguistic sign, that is, the absence of a natural connection between the sound of a word and its meaning.

Russian wolf, Lithuanian vitkas, English wulf, German Wolf, skr. vrkah testify to the material proximity of the languages being compared, but do not say anything why a given phenomenon of objective reality (the wolf) is expressed by one or another sound complex.

As a result of linguistic changes, a word is transformed not only externally, but also internally, when not only the phonetic appearance of the word changes, but also its meaning, its meaning.

So, for example, the stages of semantic change in the word ramen can be presented as: arable land ® arable land overgrown with forest ® forest on abandoned arable land – forest. A similar phenomenon occurred with the word loaf: carnage piece ® piece of food ® a piece of bread ® bread ® round bread .

Here's how the word has changed Ivan, which comes from an ancient Jewish name Yehohanan different languages:

in Greek Byzantine - Ioannes

in German - Johann

in Finnish and Estonian – Juhan

in Spanish – Juan

in Italian - Giovanni

in English - John

in Russian - Ivan

in Polish - Ian

French - Jeanne

in Georgian – Ivane

in Armenian – Hovhannes

in Portuguese – Joan

in Bulgarian – He.

So guess what Yehohanan, a name containing nine sounds, including four vowels, is the same as French Jean, consisting of only two sounds, among which there is only one vowel (and even that “nasal”) or with Bulgarian He .

Let's trace the history of another name, also coming from the East - Joseph. There it sounded like Yosef. In Greece it is Yosef became Joseph: the Greeks did not have two written characters for th And And, and the ancient sign uh , this, over subsequent centuries in Greek table was pronounced as And, ita. This is the name as it is Joseph and was transferred by the Greeks to other nations. This is what happened to him in European and neighboring languages:

in Greek-Byzantine - Joseph

in German – Joseph

in Spanish – Jose

in Italian - Giuseppe

in English – Joseph

in Russian - Osip

in Polish - Joseph (Józef)

in Turkish – Yusuf (Yusuf)

French - Joseph

in Portuguese – Juse.

And here we are iota we have, also in both cases, in German th, in Spanish X, in English and Italian j, among the French and Portuguese and .

When these substitutions were tested on other names, the result invariably remained the same. Apparently the matter is not a matter of mere chance, but of some kind of law: it operates in these languages, forcing them in all cases to equally change the same sounds coming from other words. The same pattern can be observed with other words (common nouns). French word juri(jury), Spanish jurar(hurar, to swear), Italian jure– right, English judge(judge, judge, expert). (2, 5, 15, 16).

So, in the change in these words, as mentioned above, a certain pattern can be traced. This pattern is already manifested in the presence of individual types and general causes of semantic changes.

The similarity of semantic types is especially pronounced in the process of word formation itself. For example, a large number of words with the meaning flour are formed from verbs meaning to grind, crush, grind.

Russian – grind,

– grinding

Serbo-Croatian – fly, grind

– mlevo, ground grain

Lithuanian – malti[malti] grind

– miltai[miltai] flour

German – Mahlen[ma:len] grind

– Mahlen – grinding ,

– Mehl[me:l] flour

other Indian – pinasti[pinasti] crushes, pushes

– pistam[pists] flour

There are many such series that can be cited. They are called semantic series, the analysis of which allows us to introduce some elements of systematicity into such a difficult area of etymological research as the study of word meanings (2, 12, 11).

4. The basis of the comparative-historical method can be the possibility of the collapse of one original linguistic community, a common ancestor language.

There are entire groups of languages that closely resemble each other in a number of ways. At the same time, they differ sharply from many groups of languages, which in turn are similar in many ways.

In the world there are not only individual languages, but also large and small groups of languages that are similar to each other. These groups are called “language families,” and they arose and developed because some languages are, as it were, capable of giving rise to others, and the newly appeared languages necessarily retain some features common to the languages from which they originated. We know families of Germanic, Turkic, Slavic, Romance, Finnish and other languages in the world. Very often, the kinship between languages corresponds to the kinship between the peoples speaking these languages; So at one time the Russian, Ukrainian and Belarusian peoples descended from common Slavic ancestors. It also happens that peoples have common languages, but there is no kinship between the peoples themselves. In ancient times, the kinship between languages coincided with the kinship between their owners. At this stage of development, even related languages are more different from each other than, for example, 500-700 years ago.

In ancient times, human tribes constantly fell apart, and at the same time the language also fell apart big tribe. Over time, the language of each remaining part became a special dialect, while retaining certain features of the previous language and acquiring new ones. There came a time when so many of these differences accumulated that the dialect turned into a new “language.”

In this new situation, languages began to experience new destinies. It happened that small nations, having become part of big state, abandoned their language and switched to the language of the winner.

No matter how many different languages collide and cross with each other, it never happens that a third one is born from two languages that meet. Surely one of them turned out to be the winner, and the other ceased to exist. The victorious language, even having adopted some features of the defeated one, remained itself and developed according to its own laws. When we talk about the kinship of a language, we take into account not the tribal composition of the people who speak it today, but their very, very distant past.

Take, for example, the Romance languages, which, as it turns out, were born not from the Latin of classical writers and speakers, but from the language spoken by commoners and slaves. Therefore, for Romance languages, their source “base language” cannot simply be read from books; it has to be “restored according to how its individual features were preserved in our modern descendant languages” (2, 5, 8, 16).

5. All indications regarding each element under consideration in several related languages should be taken into account. It may be a coincidence that only two languages match.

Latin match sapo"soap" and Mordovian saron“soap” does not yet indicate the relationship of these languages.

6. The various processes existing in related languages (analogy, change in morphological structure, reduction of unstressed vowels, etc.) can be reduced to certain types. The typicality of these processes is one of the necessary conditions for the application of the comparative historical method.

The comparative historical method is based on comparing languages. Comparing the state of a language in different periods helps create a history of the language. “Comparison,” says A. Mays, “is the only tool that a linguist has at his disposal for constructing the history of languages.” The material for comparison is its most stable elements. In the field of morphology – inflectional and word-formative formatives. In the field of vocabulary - etymological, reliable words (kinship terms denoting vital concepts and natural phenomena, numerals, pronouns and other stable lexical elements).

So, as already shown above, the comparative historical method includes a whole range of techniques. First, a pattern of sound correspondences is established. Comparing, for example, the Latin root host-, Old Russian GOST-, Gothic gast- scientists have established a correspondence h in Latin and G , d in Central Russian and Gothic. The voiced stop in Slavic and Germanic languages, and the voiceless spirant in Latin corresponded to the aspirated stop ( gh) in Middle Slavic.

Latin O, Central Russian O corresponded to Gothic A, and the sound was more ancient O. The original part of the root usually remains unchanged. Taking into account the above natural correspondences, it is possible to restore the original form, that is, the archetype of the word in O form* ghost .

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. In the above example, the primary sound is O, which in Germanic languages coincided with the short A .

Relative chronology is very important for establishing sound correspondences in the absence or small number of monuments of ancient writing.

The pace of linguistic change varies widely. Therefore, it is very important to determine:

1) temporal sequence of linguistic phenomena;

2) combination of phenomena in time.

It is very difficult to determine the period of history of the base language. Therefore, supporters of comparative historical linguistics, according to the degree of scientific reliability, distinguish two time slices - the most recent period of the base language (the period on the eve of the collapse of the proto-language) and some extremely early period achieved by reconstruction.

In relation to the language system under consideration, external and internal criteria are distinguished. The leading role belongs to intralinguistic criteria, based on the establishment of cause-and-effect relationships; if the reasons for changes are clarified, then the temporal sequence of related facts is determined.

When establishing certain correspondences, it is possible to establish archetypes of inflectional and word-formative formats.

Restoration of the original form occurs in a certain sequence. First, data from the same language is compared, but belonging to different eras, then data from closely related languages are used, for example, Russian with some Slavic. After this, data from other languages belonging to the same language family are accessed. The investigation carried out in this sequence allows us to identify the existing correspondences between related languages.

3. METHODS OF RECONSTRUCTION OF THE BASE LANGUAGE.

Currently, there are two methods of reconstruction - operational and interpretive. The operational one delineates specific relationships in the material being compared. The external expression of the operational approach is the reconstruction formula, that is, the so-called “form under the asterisk” (cf. * ghostic). The reconstruction formula is a brief generalized representation of the existing relationships between the facts of the languages being compared.

The interpretative aspect involves filling the correspondence formulas with specific semantic content. Indo-European content of the head of the family * p ter- (Latin pater, French pere, Gothic fodor, English father, German Vater) denoted not only a parent, but also had a social function, that is, the word * p ter one could call the deity as the highest of all heads of the family. Reconstruction is the filling of the reconstruction formula with a certain linguistic reality of the past.

The starting point from which the study of language reference begins is the base language, restored using the reconstruction formula.

The disadvantage of reconstruction is its “planar nature”. For example, when restoring diphthongs in the Common Slavic language, which later changed into monophthongs ( oi > And ; e i > i ; O i , ai >e etc.), various phenomena in the field of monophthongization of diphthongs and diphthong combinations (combination of vowels with nasals and smooth ones) did not occur simultaneously, but sequentially.

The next disadvantage 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 rectilinear 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, diphthongization of long vowels occurred in parallel in English and German: Old German hus, Old English hus"house"; modern German Haus, English house .

In close interaction with external reconstruction is the technique of internal reconstruction. Its premise is a comparison of facts of one language that exist “synchronously” in this language in order to identify more ancient forms of this language. For example, comparing the forms in Russian as peku – oven, allows us to establish for the second person the earlier form pepyosh and reveal the phonetic transition to > c before front vowels. A reduction in the number of cases in the declension system is also sometimes established through internal reconstruction within one 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 Old Russian language is confirmed by comparison with the case system of Indo-European languages (Lithuanian, Sanskrit).

A variation of the method of internal reconstruction of a language is the “philological method,” which boils down to the analysis of early written texts in a given language in order to discover prototypes of later language forms. This method is limited in nature, since in most languages of the world there are no written monuments arranged in chronological order, and the method does not go beyond one linguistic tradition.

At different levels of the language system, the possibilities of reconstruction manifest themselves to varying degrees. The reconstruction in the field of phonology and morphology is the most substantiated and evidence-based, due to a rather limited set of reconstructed units. The total number of phonemes in different places on the globe does not exceed 80. Phonological reconstruction becomes possible by establishing phonetic patterns that exist in the development of individual languages.

Correspondences between languages are subject to firm, clearly formulated "sound laws". These laws establish sound transitions that took place in the distant past under certain conditions. Therefore, in linguistics we now speak 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, what features can characterize the sound system of the host language (5, 2, 11).

4. COMPARATIVE HISTORICAL METHOD IN THE FIELD OF SYNTAX

The methodology for applying the comparative-historical method of linguistics in the field of syntax is less developed, since it is very difficult to reconstruct syntactic archetypes. A certain syntactic model can be restored with some degree of reliability, but its material word content cannot be reconstructed, if by this we mean words found in the same syntactic construction. The best results are obtained by reconstructing phrases filled with words that have the same grammatical characteristic.

The way to reconstruct syntactic models is as follows.

1. Identification of binomial phrases traced in their historical development in the languages being compared.

2. Definition of the general model of education.

3. Detection of the interdependence of syntactic and morphological features of these models.

4. After reconstructing the models of word combinations, they begin research to identify archetypes and larger syntactic unities.

Based on the material of Slavic languages, it is possible to establish the relationship of constructions of equal meaning (nominative, instrumental predicative, nominal compound predicate with and without copula, etc.) to identify more ancient constructions and resolve the question of their origin.

Consistent comparison of the structures of sentences and phrases in related languages makes it possible to establish the general structural types of these constructions.

Just as comparative-historical morphology is impossible without establishing the laws established by comparative-historical phonetics, so comparative-historical syntax finds its support in the facts of morphology. B. Delbrück, in his work “Comparative Syntax of Indo-Germanic Languages” in 1900, showed that the pronominal basis io– is a formal support for a certain type of syntactic unit – a relative clause introduced by a pronoun * ios"which". This basis, which gave the Slavic je-, common in Slavic particle same: the relative word of the Old Church Slavonic language appears in the form others like it(from * jь – ze). Later this relative form was replaced by relative indefinite pronouns.

A turning point in the development of the comparative historical method in the field of syntax was the work of Russian linguists A.A. Potebnya “From notes on Russian grammar” and F.E. Korsch "Methods of relative subordination", (1877).

A.A. Potebnya identifies two stages in the development of a sentence - nominal and verbal. At the nominal stage, the predicate was expressed by nominal categories, that is, constructions corresponding to the modern he is a fisherman, in which the noun fisherman contains the characteristics of a noun and the characteristics of a verb. At this stage there was no differentiation of noun and adjective. The early stage of the nominal structure of the sentence was characterized by concrete perception of the phenomena of objective reality. This holistic perception found its expression in the nominal structure of the language. At the verb stage, the predicate is expressed by a finite verb, and all members of the sentence are determined by their connection with the predicate.

Based on the material of the Old Russian, Lithuanian and Latvian languages, Pozhebnya compares not separate historical facts, and certain historical trends getting closer to the idea syntactic typology related Slavic languages.

In the same direction, F.E. developed the problems of comparative historical syntax. Korsh, who gave a brilliant analysis of relative clauses, the methods of relative subordination in a wide variety of languages (Indo-European, Turkic, Semitic) are strikingly similar.

Currently, in research on comparative-historical syntax, primary attention is paid to the analysis of means of expressing syntactic connections and the areas of application of these means in related languages.

In the field of comparative-historical Indo-European syntax there are a number of indisputable achievements: the theory of development from parataxis to hypotaxis; the doctrine of two kinds of Indo-European names and their meaning; provision on the autonomous nature of speech and the predominance of opposition and adjacency over other means syntactic connection, the position that in the Indo-European base language the opposition of verbal stems had a specific rather than a temporal meaning.

5. RECONSTRUCTION OF ARCHAIC MEANINGS OF WORDS

The least developed branch of comparative historical linguistics is the reconstruction of archaic meanings of words. This is explained as follows:

1) the concept of “word meaning” is not clearly defined;

2) the vocabulary of any language changes much faster compared to the system of word-formation and inflectional formats.

Archaic meanings of words should not be confused with definitions of etymological connections between words. Attempts to explain the original meaning of words have been made for a very long time. However, the true study of etymology as a science began with the substantiation of the principle of consistency between the semantic correspondences of words in a group of related languages.

Researchers have always attached great importance to the study of vocabulary as the most mobile part of the language, reflecting in its development various changes in the life of the people.

In every language, along with original words, there are borrowed words. Native words are those that a given language inherited from the base language. Slavic languages, for example, well preserved the Indo-European vocabulary they inherited. Native words include such categories of words as basic pronouns, numerals, verbs, names of body parts, and kinship terms.

When restoring the archaic meanings of a word, original words are used, the change in meanings of which is influenced by intralingual and extralinguistic factors. In most cases, it is external extralinguistic factors that influence the change of a word.

Studying a word is impossible without knowledge of the history of a given people, its customs, culture, etc. Russian city, Old Church Slavonic hail, Lithuanian gadas“wattle fence”, “fence” go back to the same concept of “fortification, fortified place” and are associated with the verb fence , fence off. Russian livestock etymologically related to Gothic skatts"money", German Schatz“treasure” (for these peoples, livestock constituted the main wealth, was a means of exchange, that is, money). Ignorance of history can distort the idea of the origin and movement of words.

Russian silk same as English silke, Danish silke in the same meaning. Therefore, it was believed that the word silk borrowed from Germanic languages, and later etymological studies show that this word was borrowed into Russian from the east, and through it passed into the Germanic languages.

The study of changes in the meanings of words under the influence of extra-linguistic factors in late XIX century, a direction called “words and things” was pursued. The methodology of this study made it possible to move from the reconstruction of the lexemic Indo-European base language to the reconstruction of the cultural and historical background, since, according to supporters of this direction, “a word exists only depending on a thing.”

One of the most developed proto-language schemes is the reconstruction of the Indo-European base language. The attitude of scientists towards the proto-linguistic basis was different: some saw it as the ultimate goal of comparative historical research (A. Schleicher), others refused to recognize any historical significance for it (A. Maye, N.Ya. Marr). According to Marr, the proto-language is a scientific fiction.

In modern scientific and historical research, the scientific and cognitive significance of the proto-language hypothesis is increasingly being affirmed. In the works domestic researchers it is emphasized that the reconstruction of the proto-linguistic scheme should be considered as the creation of a starting point in the study of the history of languages. This is the scientific and historical significance of reconstructing the base language of any language family, since, being a starting point at a certain chronological level, the reconstructed proto-language scheme will make it possible to more clearly imagine the development of a specific group of languages or an individual language.

CONCLUSION

Most effective method The study of genetic relationships between related languages is a comparative historical method, which makes it possible to establish a system of comparisons on the basis of which the history of a language can be reconstructed.

The comparative-historical study of languages is based on the fact that the components of a language appeared at different times, which leads to the fact that in languages there are simultaneously layers belonging to different chronological sections. Due to its specificity as a means of communication, language cannot change simultaneously in all elements. The various causes of language changes also cannot operate simultaneously. All this makes it possible to reconstruct, using the comparative historical method, a picture of the gradual development and change of languages, starting from the time of their separation from the proto-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 morphemes being compared are related);

– quite often the reconstruction is extremely simplified, or even already represented by part of the elements being compared;

– the possibility of ordering the stages of development of one or several phenomena in a relatively chronological manner;

– priority of form over function, despite the fact that the first part remains more stable than the last.

However, this method also has its difficulties and disadvantages (or limitations), which are associated mainly with the factor of “linguistic” time:

– a given language, used for comparison, can be separated from the original base language or another related language by such a number of steps of “linguistic” time that most of the inherited linguistic elements are lost and, therefore, the given language itself drops out of comparison or becomes unreliable material for him;

- the impossibility of reconstructing those phenomena whose antiquity exceeds the temporal depth of a given language - 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 original ones).

Comparative-historical linguistics cannot rely solely on the provided “rules” - it is often discovered that the problem is one of the exceptional ones and requires recourse to non-standard methods of analysis or is solved only with a certain probability.

However, through the establishment of correspondences between the correlated elements of different related languages ("comparative identity") and patterns of continuity over time of elements of a given language (i.e. A 1 > A 2 > …A n) comparative historical linguistics has acquired a completely independent status.

The comparative historical study of languages has not only scientific and educational significance, but also great scientific and methodological value, which lies in the fact that the study reconstructs the parent language. This proto-language as a starting point helps to understand the history of the development of a particular language. (2, 10, 11, 14).

I would also like to add that comparative historical linguistics takes us into the wonderful world of words, makes it possible to reveal the secrets of long-vanished civilizations, helps to decipher the mysteries of ancient inscriptions on rocks and papyri that have been indecipherable for thousands of years, to learn the history and “fate” of individual words, dialects and entire small and large families.

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