Comparative linguistics
Comparative linguistics was once the central focus of linguistics, involving the comparison of languages to discover how related they are historically. Known as comparative philology, the field was popular into the mid-twentieth century.
Though nowadays most linguists are concerned with finding out about the system of language itself, comparative linguistics remains an important branch of historical linguistics. In the first decade of the 21st century, non-linguist biological evolutionits have developed an interest in historical linguistics, applying computational methodologies used by evolutionary biologists to study organic evolution:[1]
In the past five to ten years, more and more non-linguists such as [Mark] Pagel [at the University of Reading, UK] have used the computational tools with which they model evolution to take a crack at languages. And one can see why. Like biological species, languages slowly change and sometimes split over time. Darwin's Galapagos finches evolved either large beaks or small; Latin amor became French amour and Italian amore. Darwin himself noted the 'curious parallel' between the evolution of languages and species in The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex.<ref name=harrisemma>
References and notes cited in text
- ↑ Harris E. (2008) Language: The language barrier. Nature News Feature. Vol. 453. Published online 21 May 2008.
- Article Lead-In: Some researchers think that the evolution of languages can be understood by treating them like genomes — but many linguists don't want to hear about it.