THE RELATIONS OF COMPARATIVE GRAMMAR TO 

 OTHER BRANCHES OF LEARNING 



BY CARL DARLING BUCK 



[Carl Darling Buck, Professor and Head of the Department of Sanskrit and Indo- 

 European Comparative Philology, University of Chicago, since 1900. A.B. 

 Yale University, 1886; Ph.D. ibid. 1889. Member of American School of 

 Classical Studies, Athens, Greece; Student in German Universities, chiefly in 

 Leipsic. Assistant Professor of Sanskrit and Indo-European Comparative Philo- 

 logy, University of Chicago, 1892-94; Associate Professor, ibid., 1894-1900. 

 Member, American Philological Association, Archaeological Institute of America, 

 American Oriental Society. Author of Vocalismus der Oskischen Sprache, A 

 Latin Grammar (with W. G. Hale), a grammar of Oscan and Umbrian.] 



IN considering the relations of comparative grammar to other 

 branches of learning it is essential to bear in mind that the term 

 is used in a wider and a narrower sense, and is applied to more than 

 one recognized field of scientific inquiry. Comparative grammar in 

 the widest sense, or general comparative grammar, does not restrict 

 itself to the study of some one group of related languages, but deals 

 with all the known languages of the earth. It classifies them in 

 groups, as far as possible according to genetic relationship, but also 

 according to general structure, and compares not only the general 

 mechanism for expressing relations, but the very distinctions and 

 relations which find linguistic expression at all. 



Comparative grammar in a narrower sense is used of the gram- 

 matical study of a group of genetically related languages, and in this 

 application represents as many distinct fields of inquiry as there are 

 well-defined groups of cognate languages. There is the comparative 

 grammar of the Indo-European languages, of the Semitic languages, 

 of the Finno-Hungarian languages, of the Malay-Polynesian lan- 

 guages, etc., etc. But the term Comparative Grammar is often ap- 

 plied still more specifically to the study of one of these groups of 

 languages, namely, the Indo-European. It is obvious that this has 

 no exclusive right to the title, and is more properly designated 

 Indo-European Comparative Grammar. Yet the use of the broader 

 term in this connection has a certain justification in the fact that it 

 is in the field of the Indo-European languages that the methods and 

 principles of comparative grammar were first established and have 

 reached their highest development. 



I believe I shall not go far amiss if, while not unmindful of its 

 broader aspects, I shall consider comparative grammar mainly 

 from the point of view of its application to a group of related 



