Characteristics of Historical Linguistics

The content of historical linguistics is mainly divided into three parts, including the changes of languages, the relations between languages and the methods of historical comparison. Studying language changes is extremely important for understanding human language and human language ability. The research results of historical linguistics reveal the prehistoric development of language changes and the relationship between early and late variants of the same language, which provides clues for the kinship of different languages. The study of historical linguistics can also make us have a deeper understanding of the role of non-linguistic factors, such as social culture and psychological factors, in the process of language change.

condition

1786, william jones read his paper on the homology of Sanskrit, Greek and Latin. On this basis, linguists in the19th century made outstanding work in the field of historical linguistics, which Engels called "19th century's three great achievements". 220 years later, judging from the present situation of historical linguistics, except for the study of kinship in Indo-European language family, other language families have not yet reached a conclusion. Various new methods have been put forward, but in practice, without the support of literature, it is still impossible to form a universally recognized conclusion. Lyman's Introduction to Historical Linguistics gives a bunch of examples of Indo-European languages, such as "strong verbs", "weak verbs" and "preerite".

In China, the present "historical linguistics" is essentially "the history of China". However, it is different from the history of Chinese, which is reflected in comparison and emphasis on the study of phonetic history.