Historical linguistics

The Historical Linguistics (also Historiolinguistik or Historical linguistics ) deals as part of the field of linguistics, as well as auxiliary historical science with all aspects of the change of language.

Here are today - as opposed to their time of origin in the 19th century - not only the far -lying precursors of today's languages ​​in focus, but the Historical Linguistics also deals with the linguistic change of the recent past and the present. The description of this change of sounds, shapes, structures and meanings also leads to the provision of grammars and dictionaries for precursors of individual languages ​​. In addition, the Historical Linguistics also examines the past reality of language use.

As a comparative-historical discipline, the Historical linguistics concerned with the question of what languages ​​can be traced back to a common original language and form a language family. Etymology and reconstruction are essential methods to get the history of related languages ​​on the track.

The beginning of the Historiolinguistik to the 19th century, when a well-founded hypothesis of relationship among Indo-European for the first time (also: Indo-European ) languages ​​have been prepared. At this time, the historical- comparative linguistics concerned with the study of the precursors of today's languages. (These are Urindogermanisch, Proto-Germanic, Old High German, Middle High German and Early New High German For their German. )

In the period following the historical- comparative linguistics dominated the entire language research. Only then is philological subjects such as German, English or Romance languages ​​, etc. established as independent sciences and disciplines. Older language levels are examined by means of texts in the form of grammars, dictionaries and language stories. The historical- comparative linguistics gave a presentation on means of understanding these older texts available, which in turn could lead to an understanding of the precursors of our own language community and culture community.

In the 20th century, new methods have been developed, the glottochronology that tries to clarify by vocabulary comparisons even at historically unused languages, the relationships, and the Quantitative linguistics, which models the course of language development and decay by mathematical means ( Piotrowski Act ).