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Comparative linguistics
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{{Short description|Branch of linguistics}} {{for|the "comparative" construction in language|comparative}} {{distinguish|contrastive linguistics}} {{More citations needed|date=September 2020}} {{Use dmy dates|date=December 2021}} {{linguistics}} '''Comparative linguistics''' is a branch of [[historical linguistics]] that is concerned with comparing languages to establish their [[history|historical]] relatedness. [[Genetic relationship (linguistics)|Genetic relatedness]] implies a common origin or [[proto-language]] and comparative linguistics aims to construct [[language family|language families]], to reconstruct proto-languages and specify the changes that have resulted in the documented languages. To maintain a clear distinction between attested and reconstructed forms, comparative linguists prefix an asterisk to any form that is not found in surviving texts. A number of methods for carrying out language classification have been developed, ranging from simple inspection to computerised hypothesis testing. Such methods have gone through a long process of development.
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