Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
In the tree model of historical linguistics, a proto-language is a postulated ancestral language from which a number of attested languages are believed to have descended by evolution, forming a language family. Proto-languages are usually unattested, or partially attested at best. They are reconstructed by way of the comparative method. [1]
Below is a partial list of proto-languages that have been reconstructed, ordered by geographic location. Africa. Proto-Afroasiatic. Proto-Semitic; Proto-Cushitic;
A proto-language is the reconstructed or historically-attested parent language of a group of languages that are genetically related. Depending on the age of the language family under consideration, its homeland may be known with near-certainty (in the case of historical or near-historical migrations) or it may be very uncertain (in the case of ...
Once a trade pidgin and the most far-reaching sign language in North America, Plains Sign Talk or Plains Sign Language is now critically endangered with an unknown number of speakers. Navajo Sign Language has been found to be in use in one clan of Navajo ; however, whether it is a dialect of Plains Sign Talk or a separate language remains unknown.
By contrast, Talmy Givón hypothesizes that Proto-Human had SOV (subject-object-verb), based on the observation that many old languages (e.g., Sanskrit and Latin) had dominant SOV, but the proportion of SVO has increased over time. On such a basis, it is suggested that human languages are shifting globally from the original SOV to the modern SVO.
Looking at families rather than individual languages, he found a rate of 30% of families/protolanguages in North America, all on the western flank, compared to 5% in South America and 7% of non-American languages – though the percentage in North America, and especially the even higher number in the Pacific Northwest, drops considerably if ...
In geolinguistics, areal features are elements shared by languages or dialects in a geographic area, [1] particularly when such features are not descended from a common ancestor or proto-language. An areal feature is contrasted with genetic relationship determined similarity within the same language family .
This category includes proto-languages and language families. Subcategories. This category has the following 4 subcategories, out of 4 total. ...