Discussion Details
| Title: | Latin Etymology |
| Submitter: | Lynn Guindon |
| Description: | It is basic to comparative Indo-European linguistics that one use the
oldest attested forms from any language family to establish relatedness between languages and units from those languages, such as words. Therefore, the evidence one wants when discussing Latin derivatives of Indo-European is written evidence from the oldest states of languages related to Latin. Rather than using Modern English words, for instance, Gothic is preferred to demonstrate the relationship between Latin (or rather the Italic branch of IE) and the Germanic family. The reasons one uses the oldest attested forms are various, but one reason is that it is best to compare languages of similar antiquity, and another is that using the oldest forms available avoids needless complications to comparisons created by analogical and sociological changes, so that one can focus as much as possible on what are clearly purely phonological changes. |
| Date Posted: | 15-Jun-2010 |
| Linguistic Field(s): | Historical Linguistics |
| Language Specialty: | Latin Indo-European |
| LL Issue: | 21.2604 |
| Posted: | 15-Jun-2010 |
