Comparative method: Difference between revisions

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Since French ''{{IPA|ʃ}}'' occurs only before ''a'' where the other languages also have ''a'', and French ''k'' occurs elsewhere, the difference is caused by different environments (being before ''a'' conditions the change), and the sets are complementary. They can, therefore, be assumed to reflect a single proto-phoneme (in this case ''*k'', spelled ⟨c⟩ in [[Latin language|Latin]]).<ref>{{harvnb|Campbell|2004|p=26}}.</ref> The original Latin words are ''{{lang|la|corpus''}}, ''{{lang|la|crudus''}}, ''{{lang|la|catena''}} and ''{{lang|la|captiare''}}, all with an initial ''k''. If more evidence along those lines were given, one might conclude that an alteration of the original ''k'' took place because of a different environment.

A more complex case involves consonant clusters in [[Proto-Algonquian]]. The Algonquianist [[Leonard Bloomfield]] used the reflexes of the clusters in four of the daughter languages to reconstruct the following correspondence sets:<ref>The table is modified from that in {{harvnb|Campbell|2004|p=141}}.</ref>