multi-lateral comparison was first created by J. Greenberg. He used this method to compare the lexicons in different languages systematically, that is, compare word with word, pronunciation with pronunciation. If the languages are found to have a systematic correspondence, they are claimed to be genetically related. The theoretical connation of this method can be summarized in the following four points: the principles of language classification; the similarity of languages; form-meaning match; the criterion of language classification. But the ...