Linguistics & Language · Historical & Comparative Linguistics
A topic within Historical & Comparative Linguistics, itself one of 10 topics in that field and part of Linguistics & Language.
2 works
August Schleicher
Systematises the comparative method into a family-tree model of Indo-European and reconstructs proto-forms marked with an asterisk, establishing both the technique and the notation later comparative linguistics inherited.
Antoine Meillet
Sets out the comparative method as inference from systematic correspondences between attested languages, and argues it can only ever establish relative chronology and relatedness, never directly recover a lost proto-language's sounds as spoken.
link checked 17 Sept 2026