comparative method

American  

noun

Historical Linguistics.

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

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Example Sentences

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

From Scientific American • Mar. 12, 2014

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

From Scientific American • Feb. 12, 2013

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

From Scientific American • Feb. 12, 2013

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

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

Important events and writers in contemporary History and Literature are added, in order to emphasise the comparative method of treating History.

From Helps to Latin Translation at Sight by Luce, Edmund