Although many strands in eighteenth-century language study (philosophical grammar, cross-linguistic comparisons, philological work) persisted in the early nineteenth century, there were also new developments which had important effects for linguistics:1. Establishment of Indo-European linguistics. Jones’s remarks on the relationship between Indo-European languages followed by demonstrations of this relationship (Schlegel, Bopp), discovery of systematic correspondences between Indo-European languages and the formulation of sound ‘laws’ (Rask, Grimm). Schleicher’s family-tree model illustrated the evolution and relationships of Indo-European languages. It was finally recognized that Sanskrit is a daughter of Indo-Iranian, like the other ancient Indo-European languages, not their ancestor. 2. Towards phonetics as an independent discipline: Rask’s and Grimm’s relatively underdeveloped phonetics improved under the influence of the Sanskrit tradition, systems of sound classification were elaborated, with a move towards the creation of a universal phonetic alphabet. 3. Professionalization of linguistics (first in Germany) and trend towards ‘scientific’ linguistics through its progressive separation from philosophy and philology. The work of linguists (Schlegel) and philologists (Lassen) of the period had unfortunate ideological repercussions beyond linguistics and can be seen as having contributed to twentieth-century racism (cf. the Indian nationalist movement’s ‘Aryan invasion theory’ and the Nazis’ Aryan myth).