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75-517: Boyne is a variation of Bóinn or Boann, Irish goddess of the River Boyne . Boyne may also refer to: Language change Language change usually does not occur suddenly, but rather takes place via an extended period of variation , during which new and old linguistic features coexist. All living languages are continually undergoing change. Some commentators use derogatory labels such as "corruption" to suggest that language change constitutes

150-559: A where the other languages also have a , and French k occurs elsewhere, the difference is caused by different environments (being before a conditions the change), and the sets are complementary. They can, therefore, be assumed to reflect a single proto-phoneme (in this case *k , spelled ⟨c⟩ in Latin ). The original Latin words are corpus , crudus , catena and captiare , all with an initial k . If more evidence along those lines were given, one might conclude that an alteration of

225-480: A "regular correspondence" between k in Hawaiian and t in the other Polynesian languages. Similarly, a regular correspondence can be seen between Hawaiian and Rapanui h , Tongan and Samoan f , Maori ɸ , and Rarotongan ʔ . Mere phonetic similarity, as between English day and Latin dies (both with the same meaning), has no probative value. English initial d- does not regularly match Latin d- since

300-400: A degradation in the quality of a language, especially when the change originates from human error or is a prescriptively discouraged usage. Modern linguistics rejects this concept, since from a scientific point of view such innovations cannot be judged in terms of good or bad. John Lyons notes that "any standard of evaluation applied to language-change must be based upon a recognition of

375-431: A different cluster must be reconstructed for each set. His reconstructions were, respectively, *hk , *xk , *čk (= [t͡ʃk] ), *šk (= [ʃk] ), and çk (in which ' x ' and ' ç ' are arbitrary symbols, rather than attempts to guess the phonetic value of the proto-phonemes). Typology assists in deciding what reconstruction best fits the data. For example, the voicing of voiceless stops between vowels

450-411: A hundred years' time, when the original meaning of 'wicked' has all but been forgotten, people may wonder how it was ever possible for a word meaning 'evil' to change its sense to 'wonderful' so quickly." Sound change —i.e., change in the pronunciation of phonemes —can lead to phonological change (i.e., change in the relationships between phonemes within the structure of a language). For instance, if

525-417: A large set of English and Latin non-borrowed cognates cannot be assembled such that English d repeatedly and consistently corresponds to Latin d at the beginning of a word, and whatever sporadic matches can be observed are due either to chance (as in the above example) or to borrowing (for example, Latin diabolus and English devil , both ultimately of Greek origin ). However, English and Latin exhibit

600-406: A linguist might attempt to investigate the possibilities that either what was earlier reconstructed as *b is in fact *m or that the *n and *ŋ are in fact *d and *g . Even a symmetrical system can be typologically suspicious. For example, here is the traditional Proto-Indo-European stop inventory: An earlier voiceless aspirated row was removed on grounds of insufficient evidence. Since

675-491: A non-distinctive quality of both. That example of the application of linguistic typology to linguistic reconstruction has become known as the glottalic theory . It has a large number of proponents but is not generally accepted. The reconstruction of proto-sounds logically precedes the reconstruction of grammatical morphemes (word-forming affixes and inflectional endings), patterns of declension and conjugation and so on. The full reconstruction of an unrecorded protolanguage

750-587: A particular type of dog. On the other hand, the word "dog" itself has been broadened from its Old English root 'dogge', the name of a particular breed, to become the general term for all domestic canines. Syntactic change is the evolution of the syntactic structure of a natural language . Over time, syntactic change is the greatest modifier of a particular language. Massive changes – attributable either to creolization or to relexification – may occur both in syntax and in vocabulary. Syntactic change can also be purely language-internal, whether independent within

825-441: A plan, in setting immediately before the eyes of the student the final results of the investigation in a more concrete form, and thereby rendering easier his insight into the nature of particular Indo-European languages , there is, I think, another of no less importance gained by it, namely that it shows the baselessness of the assumption that the non-Indian Indo-European languages were derived from Old-Indian ( Sanskrit ). The aim of

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900-561: A practical tool in all sorts of legal, judicial, administrative and economic affairs throughout the country. Altintas, Can, and Patton (2007) introduce a systematic approach to language change quantification by studying unconsciously used language features in time-separated parallel translations. For this purpose, they use objective style markers such as vocabulary richness and lengths of words, word stems and suffixes, and employ statistical methods to measure their changes over time. Languages perceived to be "higher status" stabilise or spread at

975-408: A regular correspondence of t-  : d- (in which "A : B" means "A corresponds to B"), as in the following examples: If there are many regular correspondence sets of this kind (the more, the better), a common origin becomes a virtual certainty, particularly if some of the correspondences are non-trivial or unusual. During the late 18th to late 19th century, two major developments improved

1050-407: A rigorous methodology for historical linguistic comparisons and proposed the existence of an Indo-European proto-language, which he called "Scythian", unrelated to Hebrew but ancestral to Germanic, Greek, Romance, Persian, Sanskrit, Slavic, Celtic and Baltic languages. The Scythian theory was further developed by Andreas Jäger (1686) and William Wotton (1713), who made early forays to reconstruct

1125-415: A single original phoneme : "some sound changes, particularly conditioned sound changes, can result in a proto-sound being associated with more than one correspondence set". For example, the following potential cognate list can be established for Romance languages , which descend from Latin : They evidence two correspondence sets, k : k and k : ʃ : Since French ʃ occurs only before

1200-413: A single parent language called the ' proto-language '. A sequence of regular sound changes (along with their underlying sound laws) can then be postulated to explain the correspondences between the attested forms, which eventually allows for the reconstruction of a proto-language by the methodical comparison of "linguistic facts" within a generalized system of correspondences. Every linguistic fact

1275-478: A sliding window approach, they show that, as time passes, words, in terms of both tokens (in text) and types (in vocabulary), have become longer. They indicate that the increase in word lengths with time can be attributed to the government-initiated language "reform" of the 20th century. This reform aimed at replacing foreign words used in Turkish, especially Arabic- and Persian-based words (since they were in majority when

1350-502: A subgroup of Indo-European that Russian does not belong to, the Germanic languages . The division of related languages into subgroups is accomplished by finding shared linguistic innovations that differentiate them from the parent language. For instance, English and German both exhibit the effects of a collection of sound changes known as Grimm's Law , which Russian was not affected by. The fact that English and German share this innovation

1425-457: Is a "descendant" of its "ancestor" Old English. When multiple languages are all descended from the same ancestor language, as the Romance languages are from Vulgar Latin , they are said to form a language family and be " genetically " related. According to Guy Deutscher , the tricky question is "Why are changes not brought up short and stopped in their tracks? At first sight, there seem to be all

1500-458: Is based on their concepts of how to proceed. This step involves making lists of words that are likely cognates among the languages being compared. If there is a regularly-recurring match between the phonetic structure of basic words with similar meanings, a genetic kinship can probably then be established. For example, linguists looking at the Polynesian family might come up with a list similar to

1575-417: Is common, but the devoicing of voiced stops in that environment is rare. If a correspondence -t-  : -d- between vowels is found in two languages, the proto- phoneme is more likely to be *-t- , with a development to the voiced form in the second language. The opposite reconstruction would represent a rare type. However, unusual sound changes occur. The Proto-Indo-European word for two , for example,

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1650-497: Is defined as transmission across the generations: children learn a language from the parents' generation and, after being influenced by their peers, transmit it to the next generation, and so on. For example, a continuous chain of speakers across the centuries links Vulgar Latin to all of its modern descendants. Two languages are genetically related if they descended from the same ancestor language . For example, Italian and French both come from Latin and therefore belong to

1725-407: Is inferred by the analysis of features within that language. Ordinarily, both methods are used together to reconstruct prehistoric phases of languages; to fill in gaps in the historical record of a language; to discover the development of phonological, morphological and other linguistic systems and to confirm or to refute hypothesised relationships between languages. The comparative method emerged in

1800-485: Is not considered "related" to Arabic. However, it is possible for languages to have different degrees of relatedness. English , for example, is related to both German and Russian but is more closely related to the former than to the latter. Although all three languages share a common ancestor, Proto-Indo-European , English and German also share a more recent common ancestor, Proto-Germanic , but Russian does not. Therefore, English and German are considered to belong to

1875-420: Is part of a whole in which everything is connected to everything else. One detail must not be linked to another detail, but one linguistic system to another. Relation is considered to be "established beyond a reasonable doubt" if a reconstruction of the common ancestor is feasible. The ultimate proof of genetic relationship, and to many linguists' minds the only real proof, lies in a successful reconstruction of

1950-702: Is reconstructed as *dwō , which is reflected in Classical Armenian as erku . Several other cognates demonstrate a regular change *dw- → erk- in Armenian. Similarly, in Bearlake, a dialect of the Athabaskan language of Slavey , there has been a sound change of Proto-Athabaskan *ts → Bearlake kʷ . It is very unlikely that *dw- changed directly into erk- and *ts into kʷ , but they probably instead went through several intermediate steps before they arrived at

2025-419: Is seen as evidence of English and German's more recent common ancestor—since the innovation actually took place within that common ancestor, before English and German diverged into separate languages. On the other hand, shared retentions from the parent language are not sufficient evidence of a sub-group. For example, German and Russian both retain from Proto-Indo-European a contrast between the dative case and

2100-557: The Gothick and the Celtick , though blended with a very different idiom, had the same origin with the Sanscrit; and the old Persian might be added to the same family. The comparative method developed out of attempts to reconstruct the proto-language mentioned by Jones, which he did not name but subsequent linguists have labelled Proto-Indo-European (PIE). The first professional comparison between

2175-531: The Indo-European languages that were then known was made by the German linguist Franz Bopp in 1816. He did not attempt a reconstruction but demonstrated that Greek, Latin and Sanskrit shared a common structure and a common lexicon. In 1808, Friedrich Schlegel first stated the importance of using the eldest possible form of a language when trying to prove its relationships; in 1818, Rasmus Christian Rask developed

2250-453: The Latin , and more exquisitely refined than either, yet bearing to both of them a stronger affinity, both in the roots of verbs and the forms of grammar, than could possibly have been produced by accident; so strong indeed, that no philologer could examine them all three, without believing them to have sprung from some common source, which, perhaps, no longer exists. There is a similar reason, though not quite so forcible, for supposing that both

2325-451: The accusative case , which English has lost. However, that similarity between German and Russian is not evidence that German is more closely related to Russian than to English but means only that the innovation in question, the loss of the accusative/dative distinction, happened more recently in English than the divergence of English from German. In classical antiquity , Romans were aware of

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2400-413: The comparative method is a technique for studying the development of languages by performing a feature-by-feature comparison of two or more languages with common descent from a shared ancestor and then extrapolating backwards to infer the properties of that ancestor. The comparative method may be contrasted with the method of internal reconstruction in which the internal development of a single language

2475-407: The 1950s and the pronunciation of today. The greater acceptance and fashionability of regional accents in media may also reflect a more democratic, less formal society — compare the widespread adoption of language policies . Can and Patton (2010) provide a quantitative analysis of twentieth-century Turkish literature using forty novels of forty authors. Using weighted least squares regression and

2550-458: The 9th or 10th century AD, Yehuda Ibn Quraysh compared the phonology and morphology of Hebrew, Aramaic and Arabic but attributed the resemblance to the Biblical story of Babel, with Abraham, Isaac and Joseph retaining Adam's language, with other languages at various removes becoming more altered from the original Hebrew. In publications of 1647 and 1654, Marcus Zuerius van Boxhorn first described

2625-408: The abduction of British women by Vikings to Iceland ) causes immigration of at least some males, and perceived status change. Then, in mixed-language marriages with these males, prehistoric women would often have chosen to transmit the "higher-status" spouse's language to their children, yielding the language/Y-chromosome correlation seen today. Comparative reconstruction In linguistics ,

2700-443: The ancestral forms from which the semantically corresponding cognates can be derived. In some cases, this reconstruction can only be partial, generally because the compared languages are too scarcely attested, the temporal distance between them and their proto-language is too deep, or their internal evolution render many of the sound laws obscure to researchers. In such case, a relation is considered plausible, but uncertain. Descent

2775-580: The application of the comparative method to reconstruct Proto-Indo-European since Indo-European was then by far the most well-studied language family. Linguists working with other families soon followed suit, and the comparative method quickly became the established method for uncovering linguistic relationships. There is no fixed set of steps to be followed in the application of the comparative method, but some steps are suggested by Lyle Campbell and Terry Crowley , who are both authors of introductory texts in historical linguistics. This abbreviated summary

2850-475: The change, the accent shifted to initial position. Verner solved the puzzle by comparing the Germanic voicing pattern with Greek and Sanskrit accent patterns. This stage of the comparative method, therefore, involves examining the correspondence sets discovered in step 2 and seeing which of them apply only in certain contexts. If two (or more) sets apply in complementary distribution , they can be assumed to reflect

2925-477: The comparative method is to highlight and interpret systematic phonological and semantic correspondences between two or more attested languages . If those correspondences cannot be rationally explained as the result of linguistic universals or language contact ( borrowings , areal influence , etc.), and if they are sufficiently numerous, regular, and systematic that they cannot be dismissed as chance similarities , then it must be assumed that they descend from

3000-470: The development *b → m would have to be assumed to have occurred only once. In the final step, the linguist checks to see how the proto- phonemes fit the known typological constraints . For example, a hypothetical system, has only one voiced stop , *b , and although it has an alveolar and a velar nasal , *n and *ŋ , there is no corresponding labial nasal . However, languages generally maintain symmetry in their phonemic inventories. In this case,

3075-517: The early 19th century with the birth of Indo-European studies , then took a definite scientific approach with the works of the Neogrammarians in the late 19th–early 20th century. Key contributions were made by the Danish scholars Rasmus Rask (1787–1832) and Karl Verner (1846–1896), and the German scholar Jacob Grimm (1785–1863). The first linguist to offer reconstructed forms from a proto-language

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3150-473: The evidence of other Indo-European languages . For instance, the Latin suffix que , "and", preserves the original *e vowel that caused the consonant shift in Sanskrit: Verner's Law , discovered by Karl Verner c. 1875, provides a similar case: the voicing of consonants in Germanic languages underwent a change that was determined by the position of the old Indo-European accent . Following

3225-606: The expense of other languages perceived by their own speakers to be "lower-status". Historical examples are the early Welsh and Lutheran Bible translations, leading to the liturgical languages Welsh and High German thriving today, unlike other Celtic or German variants. For prehistory, Forster and Renfrew (2011) argue that in some cases there is a correlation of language change with intrusive male Y chromosomes but not with female mtDNA. They then speculate that technological innovation (transition from hunting-gathering to agriculture, or from stone to metal tools) or military prowess (as in

3300-509: The first sound-law based on comparative evidence showing that a phonological change in one phoneme could depend on other factors within the same word (such as neighbouring phonemes and the position of the accent ), which are now called conditioning environments . Similar discoveries made by the Junggrammatiker (usually translated as " Neogrammarians ") at the University of Leipzig in

3375-505: The following (their actual list would be much longer): Borrowings or false cognates can skew or obscure the correct data. For example, English taboo ( [tæbu] ) is like the six Polynesian forms because of borrowing from Tongan into English, not because of a genetic similarity. That problem can usually be overcome by using basic vocabulary, such as kinship terms, numbers, body parts and pronouns. Nonetheless, even basic vocabulary can be sometimes borrowed. Finnish , for example, borrowed

3450-400: The languages and b in only one of them, if *b is reconstructed, it is necessary to assume five separate changes of *b → m , but if *m is reconstructed, it is necessary to assume only one change of *m → b and so *m would be most economical. That argument assumes the languages other than Arapaho to be at least partly independent of one another. If they all formed a common subgroup,

3525-453: The late 19th century led them to conclude that all sound changes were ultimately regular, resulting in the famous statement by Karl Brugmann and Hermann Osthoff in 1878 that "sound laws have no exceptions". That idea is fundamental to the modern comparative method since it necessarily assumes regular correspondences between sounds in related languages and thus regular sound changes from the proto-language. The Neogrammarian hypothesis led to

3600-534: The later forms. It is not phonetic similarity that matters for the comparative method but rather regular sound correspondences. By the principle of economy , the reconstruction of a proto-phoneme should require as few sound changes as possible to arrive at the modern reflexes in the daughter languages. For example, Algonquian languages exhibit the following correspondence set: The simplest reconstruction for this set would be either *m or *b . Both *m → b and *b → m are likely. Because m occurs in five of

3675-502: The main (indirect) evidence of how language sounds have changed over the centuries. Poetic devices such as rhyme and rhythm can also provide clues to earlier phonetic and phonological patterns. A principal axiom of historical linguistics, established by the linguists of the Neogrammarian school of thought in the 19th century, is that sound change is said to be "regular"—i.e., a given sound change simultaneously affects all words in which

3750-418: The meanings of existing words. Basic types of semantic change include: After a word enters a language, its meaning can change as through a shift in the valence of its connotations. As an example, when "villain" entered English it meant 'peasant' or 'farmhand', but acquired the connotation 'low-born' or 'scoundrel', and today only the negative use survives. Thus 'villain' has undergone pejoration . Conversely,

3825-432: The method's effectiveness. First, it was found that many sound changes are conditioned by a specific context . For example, in both Greek and Sanskrit , an aspirated stop evolved into an unaspirated one, but only if a second aspirate occurred later in the same word; this is Grassmann's law , first described for Sanskrit by Sanskrit grammarian Pāṇini and promulgated by Hermann Grassmann in 1863. Second, it

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3900-627: The mid-20th century, a number of linguists have argued that this phonology is implausible and that it is extremely unlikely for a language to have a voiced aspirated ( breathy voice ) series without a corresponding voiceless aspirated series. Thomas Gamkrelidze and Vyacheslav Ivanov provided a potential solution and argued that the series that are traditionally reconstructed as plain voiced should be reconstructed as glottalized : either implosive (ɓ, ɗ, ɠ) or ejective (pʼ, tʼ, kʼ) . The plain voiceless and voiced aspirated series would thus be replaced by just voiceless and voiced, with aspiration being

3975-454: The norm." The sociolinguist William Labov recorded the change in pronunciation in a relatively short period in the American resort of Martha's Vineyard and showed how this resulted from social tensions and processes. Even in the relatively short time that broadcast media have recorded their work, one can observe the difference between the pronunciation of the newsreaders of the 1940s and

4050-513: The original k took place because of a different environment. A more complex case involves consonant clusters in Proto-Algonquian . The Algonquianist Leonard Bloomfield used the reflexes of the clusters in four of the daughter languages to reconstruct the following correspondence sets: Although all five correspondence sets overlap with one another in various places, they are not in complementary distribution and so Bloomfield recognised that

4125-516: The primitive common language. In 1710 and 1723, Lambert ten Kate first formulated the regularity of sound laws , introducing among others the term root vowel . Another early systematic attempt to prove the relationship between two languages on the basis of similarity of grammar and lexicon was made by the Hungarian János Sajnovics in 1770, when he attempted to demonstrate the relationship between Sami and Hungarian . That work

4200-523: The principle of regular sound-changes to explain his observations of similarities between individual words in the Germanic languages and their cognates in Greek and Latin. Jacob Grimm , better known for his Fairy Tales , used the comparative method in Deutsche Grammatik (published 1819–1837 in four volumes), which attempted to show the development of the Germanic languages from a common origin, which

4275-516: The pronunciation of one phoneme changes to become identical to that of another phoneme, the two original phonemes can merge into a single phoneme, reducing the total number of phonemes the language contains. Determining the exact course of sound change in historical languages can pose difficulties, since the technology of sound recording dates only from the 19th century, and thus sound changes before that time must be inferred from written texts. The orthographical practices of historical writers provide

4350-462: The properties of earlier, un attested languages and hypothesize sound changes that may have taken place in them. The study of lexical changes forms the diachronic portion of the science of onomasiology . The ongoing influx of new words into the English language (for example) helps make it a rich field for investigation into language change, despite the difficulty of defining precisely and accurately

4425-437: The reasons in the world why society should never let the changes through." He sees the reason for tolerating change in the fact that we already are used to " synchronic variation ", to the extent that we are hardly aware of it. For example, when we hear the word "wicked", we automatically interpret it as either "evil" or "wonderful", depending on whether it is uttered by an elderly lady or a teenager. Deutscher speculates that "[i]n

4500-441: The reform was initiated in early 1930s), with newly coined pure Turkish neologisms created by adding suffixes to Turkish word stems (Lewis, 1999). Can and Patton (2010), based on their observations of the change of a specific word use (more specifically in newer works the preference of ama over fakat , both borrowed from Arabic and meaning "but", and their inverse usage correlation is statistically significant), also speculate that

4575-455: The regular sound-correspondences exhibited by the lists of potential cognates. For example, in the Polynesian data above, it is apparent that words that contain t in most of the languages listed have cognates in Hawaiian with k in the same position. That is visible in multiple cognate sets: the words glossed as 'one', 'three', 'man' and 'taboo' all show the relationship. The situation is called

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4650-590: The relevant set of phonemes appears, rather than each word's pronunciation changing independently of each other. The degree to which the Neogrammarian hypothesis is an accurate description of how sound change takes place, rather than a useful approximation, is controversial; but it has proven extremely valuable to historical linguistics as a heuristic , and enabled the development of methodologies of comparative reconstruction and internal reconstruction that allow linguists to extrapolate backwards from known languages to

4725-458: The same family, the Romance languages . Having a large component of vocabulary from a certain origin is not sufficient to establish relatedness; for example, heavy borrowing from Arabic into Persian has caused more of the vocabulary of Modern Persian to be from Arabic than from the direct ancestor of Persian, Proto-Indo-Iranian , but Persian remains a member of the Indo-Iranian family and

4800-480: The same token, they may tag some words eventually as "archaic" or "obsolete". Standardisation of spelling originated centuries ago. Differences in spelling often catch the eye of a reader of a text from a previous century. The pre-print era had fewer literate people: languages lacked fixed systems of orthography, and the manuscripts that survived often show words spelled according to regional pronunciation and to personal preference. Semantic changes are shifts in

4875-503: The similarities between Greek and Latin, but did not study them systematically. They sometimes explained them mythologically, as the result of Rome being a Greek colony speaking a debased dialect. Even though grammarians of Antiquity had access to other languages around them ( Oscan , Umbrian , Etruscan , Gaulish , Egyptian , Parthian ...), they showed little interest in comparing, studying, or just documenting them. Comparison between languages really began after classical antiquity. In

4950-450: The syntactic component or the eventual result of phonological or morphological change. The sociolinguist Jennifer Coates, following William Labov, describes linguistic change as occurring in the context of linguistic heterogeneity . She explains that "[l]inguistic change can be said to have taken place when a new linguistic form, used by some sub-group within a speech community, is adopted by other members of that community and accepted as

5025-527: The various functions a language 'is called upon' to fulfil in the society which uses it". Over a sufficiently long period of time, changes in a language can accumulate to such an extent that it is no longer recognizable as the same language. For instance, modern English is the result of centuries of language change applying to Old English , even though modern English is extremely divergent from Old English in grammar, vocabulary, and pronunciation. The two may be thought of as distinct languages, but Modern English

5100-415: The vocabulary available to speakers of English. Throughout its history , English has not only borrowed words from other languages but has re-combined and recycled them to create new meanings, whilst losing some old words . Dictionary-writers try to keep track of the changes in languages by recording (and, ideally, dating) the appearance in a language of new words, or of new usages for existing words. By

5175-468: The word "wicked" is undergoing amelioration in colloquial contexts, shifting from its original sense of 'evil', to the much more positive one as of 2009 of 'brilliant'. Words' meanings may also change in terms of the breadth of their semantic domain. Narrowing a word limits its alternative meanings, whereas broadening associates new meanings with it. For example, "hound" ( Old English hund ) once referred to any dog, whereas in modern English it denotes only

5250-477: The word for "mother", äiti , from Proto-Germanic *aiþį̄ (compare to Gothic aiþei ). English borrowed the pronouns "they", "them", and "their(s)" from Norse . Thai and various other East Asian languages borrowed their numbers from Chinese . An extreme case is represented by Pirahã , a Muran language of South America, which has been controversially claimed to have borrowed all of its pronouns from Nheengatu . The next step involves determining

5325-515: The word length increase can influence the common word choice preferences of authors. Kadochnikov (2016) analyzes the political and economic logic behind the development of the Russian language. Ever since the emergence of the unified Russian state in the 15th and 16th centuries the government played a key role in standardizing the Russian language and developing its prescriptive norms with the fundamental goal of ensuring that it can be efficiently used as

5400-416: Was August Schleicher (1821–1868) in his Compendium der vergleichenden Grammatik der indogermanischen Sprachen , originally published in 1861. Here is Schleicher's explanation of why he offered reconstructed forms: In the present work an attempt is made to set forth the inferred Indo-European original language side by side with its really existent derived languages. Besides the advantages offered by such

5475-467: Was found that sometimes sound changes occurred in contexts that were later lost. For instance, in Sanskrit velars ( k -like sounds) were replaced by palatals ( ch -like sounds) whenever the following vowel was *i or *e . Subsequent to this change, all instances of *e were replaced by a . The situation could be reconstructed only because the original distribution of e and a could be recovered from

5550-509: Was later extended to all Finno-Ugric languages in 1799 by his countryman Samuel Gyarmathi . However, the origin of modern historical linguistics is often traced back to Sir William Jones , an English philologist living in India , who in 1786 made his famous observation: The Sanscrit language , whatever be its antiquity, is of a wonderful structure; more perfect than the Greek , more copious than

5625-401: Was the first systematic study of diachronic language change. Both Rask and Grimm were unable to explain apparent exceptions to the sound laws that they had discovered. Although Hermann Grassmann explained one of the anomalies with the publication of Grassmann's law in 1862, Karl Verner made a methodological breakthrough in 1875, when he identified a pattern now known as Verner's law ,

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