Practice Tests
IELTS Reading (AC) Task 1 #205

A. Historical linguistics is the branch of linguistics that studies the history and development of languages over time. It seeks to understand how languages change, how they are related to one another, and how to reconstruct the prehistoric ancestral languages from which modern languages have evolved. By comparing related languages, historical linguists can trace their shared history and shed light on the migrations, interactions, and cultural development of the people who spoke them.

B. One of the core methods of historical linguistics is the comparative method. This involves systematically comparing the sounds, grammar, and vocabulary of languages that are presumed to be related to identify regular, systematic correspondences. For example, by observing that the ''p'' sound in Latin corresponds to the ''f'' sound in Germanic languages (e.g., Latin *pater* vs. English *father*), linguists can establish a genetic relationship and reconstruct the sound system of their common ancestor, in this case, Proto-Indo-European.

C. Through this process of reconstruction, historical linguistics has been able to group the world''s languages into families, such as the Indo-European, Sino-Tibetan, and Afro-Asiatic families. This work provides a deep historical perspective that often complements and sometimes challenges the findings of archaeology and genetics. For instance, the reconstruction of the Proto-Indo-European language and the tracing of its descendants has been central to theories about the prehistoric migrations of peoples across Eurasia.

D. Languages are constantly in a state of flux, with changes occurring in their pronunciation, vocabulary, and grammar over generations. Historical linguistics studies the mechanisms of these changes, such as sound shifts, borrowing of words from other languages, and grammatical simplification or complexification. It is a field that not only reveals the intricate tapestry of human linguistic history but also provides fundamental insights into the nature of language itself as a dynamic, evolving system.