Compare methods

	Lexicostatistics	Comparative Method
Field	Linguistics	Linguistics
Family	Process / pipeline	Process / pipeline
Year of origin	1952	1786
Originator	Morris Swadesh	Sir William Jones
Type	Quantitative comparison of basic vocabulary to estimate genealogical relatedness	Empirical process pipeline
Seminal source	Swadesh, M. (1952). Lexico-statistic dating of prehistoric ethnic contacts. Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, 96(4), 452–463.	Hock, H. H. (1991). Principles of Historical Linguistics (2nd ed.). Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
Aliases	Lexical Statistics, Basic Vocabulary Comparison, Cognate Percentage Method	Historical Comparative Linguistics, Genetic Linguistics
Related	4	4
Summary	Lexicostatistics is a quantitative method in historical linguistics that gauges how closely two or more languages are genealogically related by measuring the percentage of cognates they share within a fixed list of basic, culture-neutral vocabulary — classically Morris Swadesh's 100- or 200-word list. By converting word comparisons into similarity percentages, it produces a matrix of pairwise scores from which subgroupings within a language family can be inferred. It is the statistical core that underlies glottochronology, but on its own it makes no claim about absolute dates — it speaks only to degree of relatedness.	The Comparative Method is a foundational technique in historical linguistics for reconstructing ancestral languages and establishing genetic relationships between related languages. Pioneered by Sir William Jones in 1786, it systematically compares phonological, morphological, and lexical features across languages to identify regular sound correspondences and trace their shared origins. This method underpins modern historical linguistics and has been essential for understanding language families worldwide.