How can we determine that English is more closely related to other Germanic languages e g
The study of historical linguistics investigates how and why languages have changed and developed over time. This also includes studying the changes revealed in the comparison of related languages, often called comparative linguistics. In this essay I will be discussing how to classify and group languages, how we can determine relationships between them, how languages have changed and developed over time and why there are patterns and common features between languages of the same and different families. ... For example, English is part of a group of languages predominantly spoken in Northern Europe called the ‘Germanic Family.’ The Germanic languages include: English, Frisian, Dutch, Afrikaans, German (High and Low), Yiddish, Danish, Faeroese, Norwegian, Swedish and Icelandic. All these are descended from Proto-Germanic and according to Trask (1996:179) “most specialists believe that Proto-Germanic was spoken in southern Scandinavia perhaps around 500BC.” At this point it is true to say that English is more closely related to the Germanic languages than the Romance languages as it belongs to the same group within the family tree. The Romance languages, however, derive from Proto-Italic roots and are the result of the breakdown of Latin into a number of distinct regional languages, they include: French, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese and Catalan. ... According to Lyle and Campbell (1998: 165): “Subgrouping is about the internal classification of the languages within languages families; it is about the branches of a family tree and about which sister languages are more closely related to one another” Over time, it is common for a language to become divided into two or more daughter languages. ... The Romance languages are all ‘genetically related’ which according to Trask (1996:178) means that “they all started out as nothing more than regional dialects of an ancestral language.” They are descendents of ‘Proto-Italic’ and the Germanic languages are all decedents of ‘Proto-Germanic’. ... ” It is evident from this ‘un-clear’ definition that there is confusion about speakers of Proto-Indo European however; Trask also mentions that despite this uncertainty “PIE was spoken by somebody, somewhere, at some time and that it’s daughter languages now occupy a huge chunk of the globe.