Plan: Comparative grammar

Comparative grammar of the Germanic languages.

Plan:

Comparative grammar.

Comparative philology.

Comparative linguistics.

Comparative grammar is the grammar that aims to trace differences of a language to other languages. It is done by comparing the elements of different languages.

Comparative grammar was the most important branch of linguistics in the 19^th century in Europe.

Also called comparative philology, the study was originally stimulated by the discovery by Sir William Jones in 1786 that Sanskrit was related to latin Greek and German.

The study of grammar began with the ancient Greeks, who engaged in philosophical speculation about languages and described language structure. This grammatical tradition was passed on to the Romans, who translated the Greek names for the parts of speech and grammatical endings into Latin; many of these terms ( nominative, accusative, dative ) are still found in modern grammars.

But the Greeks and Romans were unable to determine How languages are related. This problem spurred the development of comparative grammar, which became the dominant approach to linguistic science in the 19^th century.

Comparative linguistics formerly comparative grammar, is the study of relationships or correspondences between two or more languages and the techniques used to discover wheteher the languages have a common ancestor. Comparative linguistics includes the study of the historical relationships of using the comparative method to search for regular ( i. e. recurring ) correspondences between the languages' phonology, grammar and core vocabulary, and through hypothesis testing; some people with little or no specialization in the field sometimes attempt to establish historical associations between languages by noting similarities between them, in a way that is considered pseudoscientific by specialists ( e.g. African/ Egyptian comparisons.

Early grammatical study appears to have gone hand in hand with efforts to understand archaic writings. Thus, grammar was originally tied to societies with long - standing written traditions.

Sanskrit is the ancient sacred and literary language of India. The sacred scriptures of Hindus are written in Sanskrit. Sanskrit belongs to the Indo - Iranian branch of the Indo - European language family. It is written in the Devanagari script, shown. In the 10^th century the Jews completed a Hebrew lexicon; they also produced a study of the language of the Old Testament.

The Greek grammarian Dionysius Thrax wrote the Art of Grammar, upon which many later Greek, Latin, and other European grammars were based.

With the spread of Christianity and the translation of the Scriptures into the languages of the new Christians, written literatures began to develop among previously nonliterate people.

Specialists in comparative grammar study sound and meaning correspondences among languages to determine their relationships to one another ( see Language ). By looking at similar forms in related languages, grammarians can diacover how different languages may have influenced one another.

Implication.

Comparative Grammar helped to explain the origins of language.

Comparative grammar revealed the relationships of languages in terms of similarities and differences.

Comparative grammar helped linguists translate one language to another language with small margin of error.

Comparative grammar ignited social relations between races who have different languages.