The comparative method is really no more characteristic of the study of language than of the other branches of modern inquiry. But it was sufficiently conspicuous in connection with the new start taken by the study early in this century to make the name of “comparative philology,” like the earlier “comparative anatomy” and the later “comparative mythology,” familiar and favored, for a time, beyond any other. And the title is still accurate enough, as applied to that aspect of the study in which it is engaged in collecting and sifting its material, in order to determine correspondences and relationships and penetrate the secrets of structure and historic growth; but it is insufficient as applied to the whole study- the science of language, or linguistic science, or glottology.
- Whitney (1875), a pag.315