ABSTRACT
Inthenineteenthcentury,virtuallythewholeeffortofdescriptive linguisticswasconcentratedonquiteasmallselectionofthe languagesoftheworld.Linguistsworkedalmostexclusivelyon membersoftheIndo-European'family'oflanguages:Latin,Greek, Sanskrit,English,German,French,theScandinavianlanguages, RussianandtheotherSlavonictongues,andsoon.Theselanguages, althoughsuperficiallyverydifferent,haveunderlyingsimilarities attributabletothefactthattheyarehistoricallyrelated:theyareall offshoots,diversifiedthroughtimeandthroughtheriseandfallof populations,ofoneprimitiveancestorinpre-history.Thecomparativemethodofnineteenth-centuryhistoricalphilologybroughtout manysimilarities,sometrivialandsomeprofound,betweenthe languagesstudied.Wecouldsaythatthisstudyproducedimplicit agreementonacommongrammaticalframework-whichwas nottransformational,norproperlygenerative,ofcourse.A grammarwrittenforonelanguagecanbeexpectedtohave characteristicswhicharetransferabletoanotherlanguageifthat otherlanguageishistoricallyrelated.Andthecomparative techniquenaturallyemphasizedandreinforcedthesetransferable qualities.
