CLAS 126- Final Exam Guide - Comprehensive Notes for the exam ( 69 pages long!)
Document Summary
Comparative method- systematic similarities can only be explained if these languages are all "daughter languages" developed from a common "mother language" Patterns of transformation that words undergo as a "mother language" changes into a "daughter language" Latin e (as in dent-) often becomes spanish ie (as in diente) Comparative reconstruction- extrapolate from commonalities among daughter languages to reconstruct features of the mother language. During the 19th century, linguists did precisely this in order to reconstruct the hypothesize ancestor of many european and. Indo european language families-the isolation of different migrant groups led to the development of language families whose daughter languages developed along distinctive lines. Romance languages are "sister languages," all daughters of the italic branch of the ie family and are thus more closely related to one another than to their cousins like armenian, English is a west germanic language, descended from the. Germanic branch of the indo-european family of languages.
