Jones states the Indo-European hypothesis in Calcutta
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In his Third Anniversary Discourse to the Asiatick Society of Bengal, William Jones argued that Sanskrit's affinity to Greek and Latin in verb roots and grammatical forms was too strong to be accidental, and that the three had sprung from a common source which perhaps no longer existed. The claim of a lost common ancestor, rather than descent of one attested language from another, is what makes this the conventional starting point of comparative linguistics. The discourse was published in the first volume of Asiatick Researches in 1788. The date of 2 February 1786 is as given in the standard accounts and was not re-checked in this session.
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- Grimm formulates the first sound shift as a systemprecedes
- Sir William Jonesconcerns
- Sanskritconcerns
- Indo-Europeanconcerns
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