Volodymyr A. Glushchenko
Doctor of Science (Linguistics), Professor at the Department
of Germanic and Slavonic Linguistics
State Higher Educational Institution «Donbas State Pedagogical University»,
Sloviansk, Ukraine
e-mail: sdpunauka@ukr.net
ORCID ID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2394-4966
DOI: https://doi.org/10.24195/2616-5317-2024-39.2
SUMMARY
The principle of historicism is a leading ontological component of the comparative-historical method. It played a key role in the emergence and development of this method. Similarities between languages had long been noticed by scholars, but they were primarily interpreted from a static perspective using the apparatus of universal grammar. The idea of a genetic relationship between certain languages had also been expressed, but for centuries it did not become dominant. A certain impetus that marked the starting point for the emergence of the comparative-historical method was the discovery of Sanskrit by Europeans. G.-L. Cooeurdoux, W. Jones, and other 18th-century researchers emphasized that Sanskrit, Ancient Greek, Latin, and the Germanic, Celtic, and Iranian languages belong to a single linguistic family and originate from a common source. Comparative linguistics in the first quarter of the 19th century represented a significant advancement compared to earlier linguisticgenetic constructions. For 17th- and 18th-century linguists, linguistic material was illustrative in nature, and facts were interpreted arbitrarily. Additionally, lexical units, which are the least stable, were at the forefront. Comparative linguistics, however, bases historical comparison of languages on their grammatical and phonetic structures, and in lexicon, appeals to archaic (primary) layers. Early comparativists identified identical functional morphemes in related (Indo-European) languages (F. Bopp), formulated the principle of regular phonetic correspondences in cognate words and forms of these languages, and on this basis reconstructed historical phonetic laws (R. Rask, J. Grimm, A. Chr. Vostokov). They also reconstructed the common lexical stock of Indo-European languages (R. Rask, J. Grimm). All language changes were interpreted as regular. This created a favorable basis for the refinement of the comparativehistorical method in comparative linguistics in the 1870s–1930s.
Key words: comparative-historical method, comparative linguistics, principle of historicism, regularity of language changes.
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