Lecture The emergence of comparative-historical linguistics in the XIX century

The final quarter of the 19th century saw the rise of a new and more rigorous set of ideas expounded by the neogrammarians (Junggrammatiker), as exemplified by Osthoff & Brugmann in 1878, among them the postulation of an extreme regularity of sound change (Ausnahmslosigkeit der Lautgesetze), which permits no exceptions to the general laws of sound change, and which therefore has to be deemed to extreme and untenable. However, on the positive side, the work of neogrammarians is characterised by a strong sense of scientific rigour (‘data-driven’) not previously exhibited by other linguistic scholars. They placed strong emphasis on phonetics & dialectology and were of major influence on American structuralism in the 20th century.

The final quarter of the 19th century saw the rise of a new and more rigorous set of ideas expounded by the neogrammarians (Junggrammatiker), as exemplified by Osthoff & Brugmann in 1878, among them the postulation of an extreme regularity of sound change (Ausnahmslosigkeit der Lautgesetze), which permits no exceptions to the general laws of sound change, and which therefore has to be deemed to extreme and untenable. However, on the positive side, the work of neogrammarians is characterised by a strong sense of scientific rigour (‘data-driven’) not previously exhibited by other linguistic scholars. They placed strong emphasis on phonetics & dialectology and were of major influence on American structuralism in the 20th century.

1. Comparative-historical linguistics

The most outstanding achievement of linguistic scholarship in the 19th century was the development of the comparative method, which comprised a set of principles whereby languages could be systematically compared with respect to their:

• sound systems,
• grammatical structure,
• vocabulary and shown to be “genealogically” related. 

Proto-Indo-European Languages