Introducing English Linguistics

The comparative method
The family-tree model of language development provides a temporal view
of how languages change over time. Indo-European, for instance, is
thought to date back to approximately 4000 BC (perhaps earlier);
Germanic to 500 BC; and East, West, and North Germanic to 350 BC. To
develop family trees and establish genetic relationships between lan-
guages, various kinds of historical, archeological, and linguistic evidence
are examined. In the case of English, this evidence can be directly
obtained, since we have written records of settlement patterns in England
and surviving manuscripts written in Old English. For Indo-European and
Germanic, however, no such records exist. These languages are therefore
proto-languages
– languages whose existence has been established
through the process of