“A system of etymology” by F. F Buslaev or on the comparison of Russian words with Sanskrit

The present article deals with the critical analysis of works by A.S. Chomyakov on the comparison of Russian words with Sanskrit, in which F.I. Buslaev formulates the principles of scientific etymological analysis. This scientific method was developed in the works of famous linguists in the first half of the nineteenth century. On the example of the works by A.S. Chomyakov, F.I. Buslaev examines the causes of erroneous etymologies: the rejection of the study of historical variability of languages, the wrong interpretation of sound and semantic correspondences, the false morphological analysis of the words and the construction of wrong semantic relations between words. As F.I. Buslaev shows that such errors deprive the research of its scientific value and lead to the sphere of unprofessional linguistics, which has become wide spread in our days.