What Is Historical Linguistics

Historical linguistics—traditionally known as  philology—is the branch of linguistics concerned with the development of a language or of languages over time. The primary tool of historical linguistics  is the comparative method, a way of identifying relations among languages in the absence of written records. For this reason, historical linguistics is sometimes called  comparative-historical linguistics. Linguists  Silvia Luraghi and ‎Vit Bubenik point out that the official act of birth of comparative historical linguistics is conventionally indicated in Sir William Jones The Sanscrit Language, delivered as a lecture at the Asiatic Society in 1786, in which the author remarked that the similarities between Greek, Latin, and Sanskrit  hinted to a common origin, adding that such languages might also be related to Persian, Gothic  and the Celtic languages (The Bloomsbury Companion to Historical Linguistics, 2010).    Examples and Observations Linguistic history is basically the darkest of the dark arts, the only means to conjure up the ghosts of vanished centuries. With linguistic history, we reach farthest back into the mystery: humankind.(Cola Minis, quoted by Lyle Campbell in Historical Linguistics: An Introduction, 3rd ed. Edinburgh University Press, 2013)[A] language  is not some gradually and imperceptibly changing object which smoothly floats through time and space, as historical linguistics based on philological material all too easily suggests.(Paul Kiparsky, 1968; quoted by Richard D. Janda and Brian D. Joseph in The Handbook of Historical Linguistics. Wiley-Blackwell, 2003) The Nature and Causes of Language Change Historical linguistics studies the nature and causes of language change. The causes of language change find their roots in the physiological and cognitive makeup of human beings. Sound changes usually involve articulatory simplification as in the most common type, assimilation. Analogy and reanalysis are particularly important factors in morphological change. Language contact resulting in borrowing is another important source of language change. All components of the grammar, from phonology to semantics, are subject to change over time. A change can simultaneously affect all instances of a particular sound or form, or it can spread through the language word by word by means of lexical diffusion. Sociological factors can play an important role in determining whether or not a linguistic innovation is ultimately adopted by the linguistic community at large. Since language change is systemic, it is possible, by identifying the changes that a particular language or dialect has undergone, to reconstruct linguistic history and thereby posit the earlier forms from which later forms have evolved.(William OGrady et al., Contemporary Linguistics: An Introduction. Bedford, 2001) Dealing With Historical Gaps [O]ne fundamental issue in  historical linguistics concerns how best to deal with the inevitable gaps and discontinuities that exist in our knowledge of attested language varieties over time. . .One (partial) response is that—to put matters bluntly—in order to deal with gaps, we speculate about the unknown (i.e. about intermediate stages) based on the known. While we typically use loftier language to characterize this activity... the point remains the same. In this respect, one of the relatively established aspects of language that can be exploited for historical study is our knowledge of the present, where we normally have access to far more data than could ever possibly become available for any previously attested stage (at least before the age of audio and video recording), no matter how voluminous an earlier corpus may be.(Brian D. Joseph and Richard D. Janda, On Language, Change, and Language Change. The Handbook of Historical Linguistics. Wiley-Blackwell, 2003)