Soru

Read the following passage:

In the mid-nineteenth century, historical philologists sought to establish linguistics as a rigorous empirical science by identifying systematic laws governing phonetic evolution across Indo-European languages. Central to this enterprise was the concept of sound shifts, which scholars posited occurred with exceptional regularity. However, critics noted that dialectal variations frequently arrested the uniform trajectory of these sound transformations, giving rise to localized anomalies that seemed to defy systematic categorization. Rather than viewing these deviations as fundamental refutations of linguistic law, pioneering philologists argued that regional dialects merely compromised the absolute universality of phonetic rules without invalidating their structural utility. By interpreting dialectal divergence as an expected environmental friction rather than an inherent flaw, scholars successfully maintained the integrity of their theoretical framework while accommodating empirical complexity.

In the context of the passage, which single word best expresses the meaning of "compromised" as used in the phrase "compromised the absolute universality of phonetic rules"?