N.E. Collinge’s scientific contributions

This chapter provides details about history of historical linguistics. Comparing languages usually results in accepting that some are simply different stages of the same thing. Then attention moves to establishing the sets of changes that represent the history of the various lines of descent and to elaborating the general theorems that control such evolution and genetic relation. In 1878, Saussure in his famous Memoire on the Indo-European vowels laid the foundations for a theory of lost “coefficients” that gave a unified account of: (a) alternations of length and “color” of extant vowels; and (b) alternating syllable shapes, plus types of nasal insertion that made sense of the nasal classes of the present stem of the Sanskrit verb. Another set of general rulings is causal in aim and functional in scope. In the early 19th century, change had been seen as the outward aspect of a natural movement toward ever improved and more sophisticated forms of speech.