In linguistics, the comparative method is a technique for studying the development of languages by performing a feature-by-feature comparison of two or more languages with common descent from a shared ancestor and then extrapolating backwards to infer the properties of that ancestor. The comparative method may be contrasted with the method of internal reconstruction in which the internal development of a single language is inferred by the analysis of features within that language. Ordinarily, both methods are used together to reconstruct prehistoric phases of languages; to fill in gaps in the historical record of a language; to discover the development of phonological, morphological and other linguistic systems and to confirm or to refute hypothesised relationships between languages.
The Italic languages form a branch of the Indo-European language family, whose earliest known members were spoken on the Italian Peninsula in the first millennium BC. The most important of the ancient languages was Latin, the official language of ancient Rome, which conquered the other Italic peoples before the common era. The other Italic languages became extinct in the first centuries AD as their speakers were assimilated into the Roman Empire and shifted to some form of Latin. Between the third and eighth centuries AD, Vulgar Latin diversified into the Romance languages, which are the only Italic languages natively spoken today, while Literary Latin also survived.
Low Franconian, Low Frankish, Netherlandic is a linguistic category used to classify a number of historical and contemporary West Germanic varieties closely related to, and including, the Dutch language. Most dialects and languages included within the category are spoken in the Netherlands, northern Belgium (Flanders), in the Nord department of France, in western Germany, as well as in Suriname, South Africa and Namibia.
A sprachbund, also known as a linguistic area, area of linguistic convergence, or diffusion area, is a group of languages that share areal features resulting from geographical proximity and language contact. The languages may be genetically unrelated, or only distantly related, but the sprachbund characteristics might give a false appearance of relatedness.
In linguistics, a stratum or strate is a language that influences or is influenced by another through contact. A substratum or substrate is a language that has lower power or prestige than another, while a superstratum or superstrate is the language that has higher power or prestige. Both substratum and superstratum languages influence each other, but in different ways. An adstratum or adstrate is a language that is in contact with another language in a neighbor population without having identifiably higher or lower prestige. The notion of "strata" was first developed by the Italian linguist Graziadio Isaia Ascoli (1829–1907), and became known in the English-speaking world through the work of two different authors in 1932.
Frankish, also known as Old Franconian or Old Frankish, was the West Germanic language spoken by the Franks from the 5th to 9th century.
Germanic philology is the philological study of the Germanic languages, particularly from a comparative or historical perspective.
German studies is the field of humanities that researches, documents and disseminates German language and literature in both its historic and present forms. Academic departments of German studies often include classes on German culture, German history, and German politics in addition to the language and literature component. Common German names for the field are Germanistik, Deutsche Philologie, and Deutsche Sprachwissenschaft und Literaturwissenschaft. In English, the terms Germanistics or Germanics are sometimes used, but the subject is more often referred to as German studies, German language and literature, or German philology.
Jan Pieter Marie Laurens de Vries was a Dutch philologist, linguist, religious studies scholar, folklorist, educator, writer, editor and public official who specialized in Germanic studies.
Deflexion is a diachronic linguistic process in inflectional languages typified by the degeneration of the inflectional structure of a language. All members of the Indo-European language family are subject to some degree of deflexional change. This phenomenon has been especially strong in Western European languages, such as English, French, and others.
In the tree model of historical linguistics, a proto-language is a postulated ancestral language from which a number of attested languages are believed to have descended by evolution, forming a language family. Proto-languages are usually unattested, or partially attested at best. They are reconstructed by way of the comparative method.
Dutch is a West Germanic language spoken by about 25 million people as a first language and 5 million as a second language. It is the third most widely spoken Germanic language, after its close relatives German and English. Afrikaans is a separate but somewhat mutually intelligible daughter language spoken, to some degree, by at least 16 million people, mainly in South Africa and Namibia, evolving from the Cape Dutch dialects of Southern Africa. The dialects used in Belgium and in Suriname, meanwhile, are all guided by the Dutch Language Union.
Michiel Arnoud Cor de Vaan is a Dutch linguist and Indo-Europeanist. He taught comparative Indo-European linguistics, historical linguistics and dialectology at the University of Leiden until 2014, when he moved to the University of Lausanne in Switzerland. De Vaan had been at the University of Leiden since 1991, first as a student and later as a teacher.
Brittonicisms in English are the linguistic effects in English attributed to the historical influence of Brittonic speakers as they switched language to English following the Anglo-Saxon settlement of Britain and the establishment of Anglo-Saxon political dominance in Britain.
Frans Van Coetsem was a Belgian (Flemish) linguist. After an academic career in Flanders and the Netherlands he was appointed professor at Cornell University in 1968, and consequently he emigrated to the US, where, after a few years, he chose to become a naturalized American citizen.
Republiek is a Dutch republican pressure group advocating the replacement of the Dutch Monarchy with a de facto parliamentary republic, founded in January 1998 in Amsterdam by Ewout Irrgang and Elisabeth van der Steenhoven, under the previous name Nieuw Republikeins Genootschap (NRG). It is a member organisation of the Alliance of European Republican Movements and is currently the largest organisation solely campaigning for a republican constitution for The Netherlands. Republic states that its mission is: "To achieve the abolition of the Dutch monarchy in favour of a democratic republic".
Lambert ten Kate was a Dutch linguist. Specialised in comparative historical linguistics, he was also a well-known art collector.
De Republikein. Tijdschrift voor de betrokken burger is a Dutch republican magazine, published since 2005.
Alice Geraldine Baltina ter Meulen is a Dutch linguist, logician, and philosopher of language whose research topics include genericity in linguistics, intensional logic, generalized quantifiers, discourse representation theory, and the linguistic representation of time. She is a professor emerita at the University of Geneva.
Henk van Riemsdijk is a Dutch linguist and professor emeritus at Tilburg University.
