The field of historical linguistics studies how languages change over time, a process that is always occurring. ________________________________________ To determine whether a language belongs with others in a family, the linguist will first find cognate words in the languages involved. After that, he will try to work out the exact sound changes that led to the form each cognate takes in the sister languages. This will be clearer if we look at an example. Most of the languages spoken in Europe belong to the Indo-European family. The word ‘polis’ in Greek means city. It has cognates in other Indo-European languages: ‘puram’ in Sanskrit with the same meaning, and ‘pilis’ in Lithuanian, with the meaning of ‘castle.’ We also find this word in place names, like Napoli in Italy or Sevastopol in Russian. However, this does not mean we can assume that any language containing a version of this word is Indo-European. ‘Singburi’ in Thailand is only one of many ‘buri,’ but that doesn’t make Thai an Indo-European language. The reason is that these names were borrowed from Sanskrit or Pali, which do in fact belong to the Indo-European family. This shows that linguists must be very careful to distinguish between a true genetic relationship and cases of borrowing. If we compare the basic vocabulary of Thai with that of Indo-European languages, few cognates will be present, and these can usually be explained by borrowing. Clearly, linguists must take the broad picture into account when working out relationships between languages.
Choices:
a. We can define a language family as a group of languages with a common ancestor.
b. It is usually assumed that every language exhibits an equal degree of complexity.
c. Studying ancient languages is a very different matter from studying ones that are still spoken today.