Comparative Linguistics Essay

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3.0 Contribution of Sanskrit to Linguistics Studies
3.1 Proto-Indo-European Language
Encyclopedia Britannica (2009) claimed that Sir William Jones wrote various notes regarding similarities between Greek, Latin, Sanskrit, Gothic, Celtic and Persian, and he believed that these languages derived from an older language, which yet to be discovered (as cited in Knapp). This encouraged other philologists to research more on the comparative linguistics or comparative grammar (see 3.2 Comparative Linguistics for discussion). Proto-Indo-European Language is a linguistic reconstruction, both internal and comparative, of Indo-European languages’ common ancestor, as there are 445 living languages if Indo-European to date. According to
Fox (1995), linguistics …show more content…

According to Fox (1995), Bopp’s book “Über das Conjugationssystem der Sanskritsprache in Vergleichung mit jenem der griechischen, lateinischen, persischen und germanischen Sprache” (On the Conjugation System of Sanskrit in comparison with that of Greek, Latin, Persian and Germanic) stirred many researchers to be part of Comparative Linguistics study. However, the idea of comparing language emerged earlier, when Jones was posted to Bengal. Many renowned philologists whom studied on this subject and produced many theories to highlight the important of language studies, especially the ancient language Sanskrit. Sir William Jones, a scholar who had learnt Arabic, Hebrew, Persian and also Chinese. was appointed by the British government as the Fort William’s Supreme Court of Judicature judge (Ursula Struct-Oppenberg, 1980). Initially, he learned the language in order to understand the culture. Jones understood the important of imposing Indian legal authorities, rather than implementing the British’s law system. He has wrote a lot regarding the similarities of various Indo-European languages such as Greek, Celtic and Latin to Sanskrit language …show more content…

The earlier version of Ancient Malay only existed in speaking form, until the original Malay started to trade with outsiders, in this case merchants from India. The merchants did not only trade goods, but also their belief, culture and language, with later assimilated into Malay language, transforming it to the Ancient Malay language. A Batu Bersurat was found in Kedukan Bukit Palembang dated back in 654M proved that the writing system for the early Malay language

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