What is comparative linguistics?

Answer 1

Comparative linguistic is a branch of linguistic that relates the characteristics of different languages. The aim of linguistic is to go beyond the study of individual languages to bring out determine what the universal Properties of language.

Answer 2

Comparative linguistics (also known as comparative philology) is a branch of historical linguistics that is concerned with, basically, how languages relate and compare to each other in history.

Comparative linguists believe that there is a common origin (a proto-language), so they try to classify existing languages into "families" of related languages, reconstruct proto-languages, and observe how the languages have changed over time through a number of different methods.
Comparative linguistics studies in a scientific way the process and rules in linguistic similarities or deviations in different languages.

Answer 3

Comparative linguistics is part of historical linguisticsand refers to the process of establishing family relationships and reconstructing proto-languages (= ancestral languages). For example, if we compare English, Dutch, and German, we can find a number of cognates, that is, words that are similar in phonetic form and in meaning such as English 'book' Dutch 'boek' and German 'Buch.' If we compare the equivalent words in French 'livre' Spanish 'libro' and Italian 'libro,' it's clear that English, Dutch, and German are similar to each other and that French, Spanish, and Italian are similar to each other. This suggests that English, Dutch and German belong to a language family distinct from that which French, Spanish, and Italian belong to. The former is called proto-Germanic; the latter is known to have been Latin.

Contrastive linguistics is part of applied linguisticsand seeks to establish the similarities and differences between a language learner's first language and the target language (= the one being learned) in order to attempt to predict where learners will have difficult and make mistakes. For example, languages like Japanese, Korean, and Mandarin do not have articles ('the' and 'a'). We can predict, then, that speakers of these languages will have difficulty learning articles when they learn English. Such is the case. Note, however, that contrastive linguistics is not as straightforward in its ability to predict mistakes as the example I've given. It is most powerful when predicting difficulties in pronunciation, but many types of grammar errors in second language learning occur in areas that contrastive linguistics cannot explain. For example, Spanish speakers have personal endings on verbs (e.g. duerm-o 'I sleep' and duerm-a 'she sleeps'), but they frequently omit the -s in English present tense forms like 'eats' or 'sleeps.' Contrastive analysis would not predict this problem since the -s in English parallels Spanish inflection.

Answer 4

Comparative linguistics is the study of similarities and differences between languages to determine their relationships and historical connections. By analyzing the phonological, morphological, and syntactic features of languages, linguists can trace their evolution and reconstruct their common ancestral forms. This field helps us understand how languages change over time and how they are related to each other.

Answer 5

The study of how a language changes over a long period of time

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Answer 6

Comparative linguistics is a branch of history linguistics that is concerned on comparing languages to establish historical relatedness. It implies a common origin.