Background to the Comparative Method

Abstract

Abstract The Comparative Method is both the earliest and the most important of the methods of reconstruction. Most of the major insights into the prehistory of languages have been gained by the application of this method, and most reconstructions have been based on it. The various other methods and procedures outlined in the previous chapter, which will be considered in more detail later, have been employed mainly in a secondary capacity, in part building on the findings of the Comparative Method, and in part supplementing them, but only rarely competing with the method as such. Not surprisingly, there fore, this method has often been regarded as virtually identical with the historical study of languages, as witnessed by terms such as 'comparative linguistics', 'comparative philology', and so on, which have been used to designate the whole field. The method has therefore come to epitomize the subject, especially as practised in the nineteenth century.