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This suggests that Amazonia is not a good candidate for a linguistic area based on the features examined in this study.” Instead, Birchall finds evidence for three “macroregions” in South America: the Andes, Western South America, and Eastern South America, with some overlap in features between the Andes and Western South America. [19]
Over a thousand known languages were spoken by various peoples in North and South America prior to their first contact with Europeans. These encounters occurred between the beginning of the 11th century (with the Nordic settlement of Greenland and failed efforts in Newfoundland and Labrador) and the end of the 15th century (the voyages of Christopher Columbus).
The grammar model from Syntactic Structures (1957) by Noam Chomsky, an American linguist. Noam Chomsky is an American linguist who is often described as the "father of modern linguistics". [3] He theorized on language from a biological standpoint, and referred to it as a cognitive ""module"" in the human brain.
Lyle Campbell (2012) proposed the following list of 53 uncontroversial indigenous language families and 55 isolates of South America – a total of 108 independent families and isolates. [14] Language families with 9 or more languages are highlighted in bold. The remaining language families all have 6 languages or fewer.
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.
North America is home to many language families and some language isolates.In the Arctic north, the Eskimo–Aleut languages are spoken from Alaska to Greenland.This group includes the Aleut language of the Aleutian Islands, the Yupik languages of Alaska and the Russian Far East, and the Inuit languages of Alaska, Yukon, the Northwest Territories, Nunavut, and Greenland.
The concept of a (single, identifiable) "homeland" of a given language family implies a purely genealogical view of the development of languages. This assumption is often reasonable and useful, but it is by no means a logical necessity, as languages are well known to be susceptible to areal change such as substrate or superstrate influence.
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 ...