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The origin of language, its relationship with human evolution, and its consequences have been subjects of study for centuries.Scholars wishing to study the origins of language draw inferences from evidence such as the fossil record, archaeological evidence, contemporary language diversity, studies of language acquisition, and comparisons between human language and systems of animal ...
Linguistics is the scientific study of language, [1] involving analysis of language form, language meaning, and language in context. [2]Language use was first systematically documented in Mesopotamia, with extant lexical lists of the 3rd to the 2nd Millennia BCE, offering glossaries on Sumerian cuneiform usage and meaning, and phonetical vocabularies of foreign languages.
The highly diverse Nilo-Saharan languages, first proposed as a family by Joseph Greenberg in 1963 might have originated in the Upper Paleolithic. [1] Given the presence of a tripartite number system in modern Nilo-Saharan languages, linguist N.A. Blench inferred a noun classifier in the proto-language, distributed based on water courses in the Sahara during the "wet period" of the Neolithic ...
Polygenesis points to a multiple origin of human languages. According to this hypothesis, languages evolved as several lineages independent of one another. [16] Modern investigation about creole languages demonstrated that with an appropriate linguistic input or pidgin, children develop a language with stable and defined grammar in one ...
In terms of evolutionary theory, historical linguistics (as opposed to research into the origin of language) studies Lamarckian acquired characteristics of languages. This perspective explores how languages adapt and change over time in response to cultural, societal, and environmental factors.
notes by Johann Flierl, Wilhelm Poland and Georg Schwarz, culminating in Walter Roth's The Structure of the Koko Yimidir Language in 1901. [207] [208] A list of 61 words recorded in 1770 by James Cook and Joseph Banks was the first written record of an Australian language. [209] 1891: Galela: grammatical sketch by M.J. van Baarda [210] 1893: Oromo
Theory of language is a topic in philosophy of language and theoretical linguistics. [1] It has the goal of answering the questions "What is language?"; [2] [3] "Why do languages have the properties they do?"; [4] or "What is the origin of language?". In addition to these fundamental questions, the theory of language also seeks to understand ...
A Guide to the World’s Languages, Volume I: Classification (1987) includes classification of the world's languages; a history and analysis of the genetic classification of languages; and a defense of the controversial taxonomic work of Joseph Greenberg. The Origin of Language: Tracing the Evolution of the Mother Tongue (1994a)