1502: Tracing Languages Systematically (g.l.3) Jan 22, 2019

The idea of comparing an older form of a language with the more modern one, it’s possible to get a sense for what sounds and other features change and what stays the same, but this is only useful for specific examples. However, with the acceptance of Grimm's Law, it became possible to systematically estimate language change over time. People could make educated guesses as to how, if there were certain ways that languages would tend to split systematically, then linguists could predict the earlier steps and create a proto-language. This was how Proto-Germanic was recreated, but also even more ambitious theories, like the recreation of Proto-Indo-European. These same principles were used in the creation and acceptance of fairly robust proto-languages from all over the world.