Comparative grammar

1. Comparative Grammar Prepared by: Geraldine B. Paneda Graduate Student

2. When we compare what two things or people do, we look at what makes one different from the other.

3. Comparative Grammar "The task of the  comparative grammarian is to compare the grammatical forms and usages of an allied group of tongues and thereby reduce them to their earliest forms and senses."

4. Comparative linguistics,  formerly  Comparative Grammar, is the study of the relationships or correspondences between two or more languages and the techniques used to discover whether the languages have a common ancestor. Comparative grammar was the most important branch of linguistics in the 19 th century in Europe. Comparative Grammar

5. Also called comparative philology, the study was originally stimulated by the discovery by Sir William Jones in 1786 that Sanskrit was related to Latin, Greek, and German. Comparative Grammar

6. Contemporary comparative grammar is significantly broader in scope. It is concerned with a theory of grammar that is postulated to be an innate component of the human mind/brain, a faculty of language that provides an explanatory basis for how a human being can acquire a first language. In this way, the theory of grammar is a theory of human language and hence establishes the relationship among all languages--not just those that happen to be related by historical accident (for instance, via common ancestry).

7. The study of comparative grammar has long been a concern of linguistic theory. To the extent that, by studying the aspects of grammar which vary, we might arrive at an idea of what does not vary, this study can be seen as one way of studying universals of grammar . Although it has antecedents in the Middle Ages, comparative grammar was not systematically studied until the nineteenth century, and then purely from a historical perspective.

8. In the past forty years, however, two important approaches have emerged: Greenbergian language typology and the Chomskyan programme based on the idea of the interaction of the principles and parameters of universal grammar.

9. Neogrammarian Principle An assumption important to the comparative method is the Neogrammarian principle that the laws governing sound change are regular and have no exceptions that cannot be accounted for by some other regular phenomenon of language.

10. Neogrammarian Principle As an example of the method, English is seen to be related to Italian if a number of words that have the same meaning and that have not been borrowed are compared:  piede  and “foot,”  padre  and “father,”  pesce  and “fish.” The initial sounds, although different, correspond regularly according to the pattern discovered by Jacob Grimm and named Grimm’s law  after him; the other differences can be explained by other regular sound changes.

11. Because regular correspondences between English and Italian are far too numerous to be coincidental, it becomes apparent that English and Italian stem from the same parent language. The comparative method was developed and used successfully in the 19th century to reconstruct this parent language, Proto-Indo-European , and has since been applied to the study of other language families.

12. Italian Language VS English Language

13. Italian language structures are different from English language structures . English speakers say, for example, “I don’t go” or “ I’m not going .” Italian speakers, thinking in their own language, say, “I not go”. Germans say “I go not”. In French it is “I not go not”, while in Spanish it is “no go I”.

14. If you consider that a 12 -year-old Italian child may have said “ I not go ” 10 to 20 thousand times. How many times will it take to rewire his/her memory to produce instead “I don’t go” or “I’m not going” ?

15. Speakers have these structures ‘hard-wired’ into their brain from early childhood. In order to modify these structures the brain must be stimulated through engaging and constructive repetition done in a caring environment.

16. Boring repetition with an unfriendly and unmotivated teacher produces no change. (Consider how you have been taught a foreign language and how much you have learned.) Neuroscience has shown that the deeper parts of the brain which react to emotional stimuli “switch on” the outer cortex.

17. The following is a list of ‘hard-wired’ structures that are difficult for Italian students to unlearn. Italian students will commonly say in English: I have 15 years. I have thirst. Now I play. Yesterday I not played tennis. Yesterday I not am gone at Milano.

18. Michael Jackson is better of Madonna. The my mother not speak English. You must to speak slowly. You can to go? Want you to go?

19. English and Italian grammar are very different. As a few basic examples, the Italian language does not have the auxiliaries ‘do,’ ‘will,’ or ‘would,’. Questions in Italian are formed with rising intonation, and the tense systems of the two languages do not coincide.

20. THE END Thank You for Listening!!!!