Language Study - Historical comparative linguistics

Question 1

William Jones

Answer 1

• Englishman
• 1786, stated that the old Indian language Sanskrit had similiar structure to most European languages
• Proved all these languages had a common source

Question 2

Franz Bopp

Answer 2

• German linguist
• Founder of Indo-European comparative linguistic based on genetic principles

Question 3

August Schleicher

Answer 3

• German Comparist
• Viewed linguistics as an organism based on the same principle and undergoing the same evolution as living organisms
• Created so-called genealogical tree of languages presenting the idea that European inflectional (synthetic) languages had been developed from simpler forms isolating (analytic) and agglutinative languages
• every language is first of all isolating then it develops the system of inflectional morphemes

Question 4

Neogrammarians

Answer 4

• Wanted to explain language forms in terms of regular sound-laws
• They were interested in historical phonetics and morphology, ignoring the problems of syntax and the social functioning of language

Question 5

Wilhelm Von Humboldt

Answer 5

• for him language was an activity or an organism developing spontaneously
• focused on concrete acts of speech rather than on the language system and disclosed links between language and thinking, postulating the idea that language expresses the mentality of its nation
• he had analysed language regardless of them being genetically related or not