Eurasiatic

The Uralic languages form a language family of about 30 languages spoken by approximately 20 million people. The name of the language family refers to the location of the family’s suggested Urheimat (homeland), which is often placed close to the Ural mountains. Countries that are home to a significant number of speakers of Uralic languages include: Estonia, Finland, Hungary, Norway, Romania, Russia, the Serbian province of Vojvodina, and Sweden. The healthiest Uralic languages, in terms of the number of native speakers and national ...

Including:

• Uralic languages - Family Tree
• Uralic languages - Classification of Languages
• Uralic languages - Typology
• Uralic languages - Selected cognates
• Uralic languages - Bibliography

Read more here: » Uralic languages: Encyclopedia - Uralic languages

The Ural-Altaic language family was a grouping of languages which was once widely accepted by linguists, but has since been generally rejected[citation needed]. It comprises of the Altaic languages (Turkish, Mongolian, Kazakh, Uzbek, Tatar, Manchu, and its derivatives, plus perhaps Korean and Japanese), and the Uralic languages (Hungarian, Finnish, Estonian, and its derivatives. The theory of a Uralo-Altaic group has now been widely disapproved by historical linguists as a misnomer. Even the existence of the A ...

Read more here: » Ural-Altaic languages: Encyclopedia - Ural-Altaic languages

Altaic is a proposed language family which includes 60 languages spoken by about 250 million people, mostly in and around Central Asia and Far East. The relationships among these languages remain a matter of debate among historical linguists. Some scholars consider the obvious similarity between these languages as genetically inherited; others propose the idea of the Sprachbund. Its proponents traditionally considered it to include the Turkic languages, the Mongolic languages, the Tungusic languages (or Manchu-Tungus); to these ...

Including:

• Altaic languages - Controversy
• Altaic languages - Links

Read more here: » Altaic languages: Encyclopedia - Altaic languages

The various subgroups of the Indo-European family include (in historical order of their first attestation): Anatolian languages — earliest attested branch, from the 18th century BC; extinct, most notable was the language of the Hittites. Indo-Iranian languages, descending from a common ancestor, Proto-Indo-Iranian Indo-Aryan languages, including Sanskrit, attested from the 2nd millennium BC Iranian languages, attested from roughly 1000 BC, including Avestan and Persian Dardic languages ...

See also:

Indo-European languages, Indo-European languages - Classification, Indo-European languages - Satem and Centum languages, Indo-European languages - Suggested superfamilies, Indo-European languages - History, Indo-European languages - Kurgan hypothesis, Indo-European languages - Competing hypotheses, Indo-European languages - Sound changes

Read more here: » Indo-European languages: Encyclopedia II - Indo-European languages - Classification

There are two main schools of thought about the Altaic theory. One is that the proposed constituent language families (Turkic, Mongolic, and Tungusic in the basic theory; with the addition of Korean and Japanese in extended versions) are genetically or 'divergently' related by descent from a common ancestor, 'Proto-Altaic'. The other school rejects this theory (so it is often called the 'Anti-Altaic' school) and argues that the member languages are ...

See also:

Altaic languages, Altaic languages - Controversy

Read more here: » Altaic languages: Encyclopedia II - Altaic languages - Controversy

Proto-Indo-European is conjectured to have used the following phonemes. See Indo-European languages for a summary of how these sounds evolved in the various Indo-European languages. Proto-Indo-European language - Consonants. The table gives the most common notation in modern publications. Variant transcriptions are given below. Raised ʰ stands for aspiration. According to the glottalic theory, the "voi ...

See also:

Proto-Indo-European language, Proto-Indo-European language - Phonology, Proto-Indo-European language - Consonants, Proto-Indo-European language - Vowels, Proto-Indo-European language - Ablaut, Proto-Indo-European language - Noun, Proto-Indo-European language - Pronoun, Proto-Indo-European language - Verb, Proto-Indo-European language - Numbers, Proto-Indo-European language - Relationship to other language families, Proto-Indo-European language - Sample texts

Read more here: » Proto-Indo-European language: Encyclopedia II - Proto-Indo-European language - Phonology

The Russian linguist Nikolay Marr expounded a monogenetic theory of language that resolves all modern languages to four primordial exclamations. Drawing on the works of Vladislav Illich-Svitych, the American linguist Joseph Greenberg claimed that long-distance relationships can be shown by applying a controversial approach he called "mass lexical comparison". The languages are compared by using a limited set of words (including function words and affixes) simply by means of counting cognates. He used this method to establish a classification of African languages. His work has generated considerable interest outside the ...

See also:

Proto-World language, Proto-World language - History, Proto-World language - Reference

Read more here: » Proto-World language: Encyclopedia II - Proto-World language - History

The traditional classification of the Uralic languages is as follows. Obsolete names are displayed in italics. Samoyedic Northern Samoyedic Enets (Yenets, Yenisei-Samoyed) — Nearly extinct Nenets (Yurak) Nganasan (Tavgy, Tavgi, Tawgi, Tawgi-Samoyed) Yurats Southern Samoyedic Kamassian (Kamas) — Extinct (20th century) Mator (Motor) — Extinct (19th cen ...

See also:

Uralic languages, Uralic languages - Family Tree, Uralic languages - Classification of Languages, Uralic languages - Typology, Uralic languages - Selected cognates, Uralic languages - Bibliography

Read more here: » Uralic languages: Encyclopedia II - Uralic languages - Classification of Languages

The concept of the Nostratic languages is best understood in the context of the discovery, methods of investigation, and application of the Indo-European family of languages. When Sir William Jones first suggested the Indo-European hypothesis, he backed up his idea with a systematic examination of what might be termed "phono-semantic sets" -- words which, in different languages, had both similar sounds and meanings. Jones essentially argued that there were too many of these sets for their existence to be mere coincidence, laying particular e ...

See also:

Nostratic languages, Nostratic languages - History: Indo-European to Nostratic, Nostratic languages - Criticism, Nostratic languages - Example of Nostratic Technique

Read more here: » Nostratic languages: Encyclopedia II - Nostratic languages - History: Indo-European to Nostratic

In the following, each "bulleted" item is a known language family. The geographic headings over them are meant solely as a tool for grouping families into collections more comprehensible than an unstructured list of the dozen or two of independent families. Geographic relationship is convenient for that purpose, but these headings are not a suggestion of any "super-families" phylogenetically relating the families named. Language family - Africa and southwest Asia. Afro-Asiatic languages (forme ...

See also:

Language family, Language family - Largest families, Language family - Language families spoken, Language family - Africa and southwest Asia, Language family - Europe and north west and south Asia, Language family - East Southeast Asia and the Pacific, Language family - Australian Aboriginal languages, Language family - North America, Language family - Central America and South America, Language family - Language isolates oral languages, Language family - Central & South America, Language family - North America, Language family - Australia, Language family - Asia, Language family - Africa, Language family - Europe, Language family - Unclassified languages, Language family - Europe, Language family - Africa, Language family - Asia, Language family - South America, Language family - North America, Language family - Sign languages, Language family - Creole languages pidgins mixed languages and trade languages, Language family - Proposed language stocks, Language family - Other natural languages of special interest, Language family - Bibliography

Read more here: » Language family: Encyclopedia II - Language family - Language families spoken

There are two main schools of thought about the Altaic theory. One is that the proposed constituent language families (Turkic, Mongolic, and Tungusic in the basic theory; with the addition of Korean and Japanese in extended versions) are genetically or 'divergently' related by descent from a common ancestor, 'Proto-Altaic'. The other school rejects this theory (so it is often called the 'Anti-Altaic' school) and argues that the member languages are ...

See also:

Altaic languages, Altaic languages - Controversy, Altaic languages - Links

Read more here: » Altaic languages: Encyclopedia II - Altaic languages - Controversy

Joseph Greenberg - Language typology. Greenberg's fame rests in part on his seminal contributions to synchronic linguistics and the quest to identify linguistic universals. In the late 1950's, Greenberg began to examine corpora of languages covering a wide geographic and genetic distribution. He located a number of interesting potential universals, as well as many strong cross-linguistic tendencies. In particular, Greenberg invented the notion of "implicational universal", which takes the form "if a langua ...

See also:

Joseph Greenberg, Joseph Greenberg - Contributions to linguistics, Joseph Greenberg - Language typology, Joseph Greenberg - African languages, Joseph Greenberg - Indo-Pacific languages, Joseph Greenberg - Languages of the Americas, Joseph Greenberg - Eurasiatic Languages, Joseph Greenberg - Greenberg's method of mass comparison

Read more here: » Joseph Greenberg: Encyclopedia II - Joseph Greenberg - Contributions to linguistics

Mass lexical comparison - Lexical similarity. In an effort to extend comparative linguistics beyond its present limits, and arrive at his broad super-family groupings, Greenberg invented a new statistical method, mass lexical comparison. In this method, one simply compares a large sample of words from one language A with its equivalents in the other language B, looking for similar sound patterns. Thus, for example, Spanish cabezaSee also:

Mass lexical comparison, Mass lexical comparison - Traditional historical linguistics, Mass lexical comparison - The comparative method, Mass lexical comparison - Limitations of the comparative method, Mass lexical comparison - Mass lexical comparison, Mass lexical comparison - Lexical similarity, Mass lexical comparison - From similarity to phylogeny, Mass lexical comparison - Mass comparison, Mass lexical comparison - Choosing the sample lexicon, Mass lexical comparison - Weaknesses of the method, Mass lexical comparison - Significance of the similarity, Mass lexical comparison - Onomatopoeic forms, Mass lexical comparison - Semantic drift and subjectivity, Mass lexical comparison - Assessment, Mass lexical comparison - Empirical validation, Mass lexical comparison - Acceptance

Read more here: » Mass lexical comparison: Encyclopedia II - Mass lexical comparison - Mass lexical comparison

The various subgroups of the Indo-European family include (in historical order of their first attestation): Anatolian languages — earliest attested branch, from the 18th century BC; extinct, most notable was the language of the Hittites. Indo-Iranian languages, descending from a common ancestor, Proto-Indo-Iranian Indo-Aryan, including Sanskrit, attested from the 2nd millennium BC Iranian languages, attested from roughly 1000 BC, including Avestan and Persian. Greek language — ...

See also:

Indo-European languages, Indo-European languages - Classification, Indo-European languages - Satem and Centum languages, Indo-European languages - Suggested superfamilies, Indo-European languages - History, Indo-European languages - Kurgan hypothesis, Indo-European languages - Competing hypotheses, Indo-European languages - Sound changes

Read more here: » Indo-European languages: Encyclopedia II - Indo-European languages - Classification

Mass lexical comparison - The comparative method. Since the development of comparative linguistics in the 19th century, a linguist who claims that two languages are related, in the absence of historical evidence, is expected to back up that claim by presenting general rules that describe the differences between their lexicons, morphologies, and grammars. The procedure is described in detail in the comparative method article. For instance, one could prove that Spanish is related to Italian by showing that m ...

See also:

Mass lexical comparison, Mass lexical comparison - Traditional historical linguistics, Mass lexical comparison - The comparative method, Mass lexical comparison - Limitations of the comparative method, Mass lexical comparison - Mass lexical comparison, Mass lexical comparison - Lexical similarity, Mass lexical comparison - From similarity to phylogeny, Mass lexical comparison - Mass comparison, Mass lexical comparison - Choosing the sample lexicon, Mass lexical comparison - Weaknesses of the method, Mass lexical comparison - Significance of the similarity, Mass lexical comparison - Onomatopoeic forms, Mass lexical comparison - Semantic drift and subjectivity, Mass lexical comparison - Assessment, Mass lexical comparison - Empirical validation, Mass lexical comparison - Acceptance

Read more here: » Mass lexical comparison: Encyclopedia II - Mass lexical comparison - Traditional historical linguistics

The following is a very brief selection of cognates in basic vocabulary across the Uralic family, which may serve to give an idea of the sound changes involved. * May not be etymologically of the same origin. ...

See also:

Uralic languages, Uralic languages - Family Tree, Uralic languages - Classification of Languages, Uralic languages - Typology, Uralic languages - Selected cognates, Uralic languages - Bibliography

Read more here: » Uralic languages: Encyclopedia II - Uralic languages - Selected cognates

Mass lexical comparison - Significance of the similarity. In theory, the reliability of Greenberg's method could be settled by statistical analysis; namely, by computing the probability that a given similarity level S could have arisen by chance coincidences between totally unrelated languages. Two languages then should be considered similar only if the observed value of < ...

See also:

Mass lexical comparison, Mass lexical comparison - Traditional historical linguistics, Mass lexical comparison - The comparative method, Mass lexical comparison - Limitations of the comparative method, Mass lexical comparison - Mass lexical comparison, Mass lexical comparison - Lexical similarity, Mass lexical comparison - From similarity to phylogeny, Mass lexical comparison - Mass comparison, Mass lexical comparison - Choosing the sample lexicon, Mass lexical comparison - Weaknesses of the method, Mass lexical comparison - Significance of the similarity, Mass lexical comparison - Onomatopoeic forms, Mass lexical comparison - Semantic drift and subjectivity, Mass lexical comparison - Assessment, Mass lexical comparison - Empirical validation, Mass lexical comparison - Acceptance

Read more here: » Mass lexical comparison: Encyclopedia II - Mass lexical comparison - Weaknesses of the method

The Indo-European verb system is complex and exhibits a system of ablaut, as is still visible in the Germanic languages (among others)—for example, the vowel in the English verb to sing varies according to the conjugation of the verb: sing, sang, and sung. The system is clearly represented in Ancient Greek and Vedic Sanskrit, two of the most completely attested of ...

See also:

Proto-Indo-European language, Proto-Indo-European language - Phonology, Proto-Indo-European language - Consonants, Proto-Indo-European language - Vowels, Proto-Indo-European language - Ablaut, Proto-Indo-European language - Noun, Proto-Indo-European language - Pronoun, Proto-Indo-European language - Verb, Proto-Indo-European language - Numbers, Proto-Indo-European language - Relationship to other language families, Proto-Indo-European language - Sample texts

Read more here: » Proto-Indo-European language: Encyclopedia II - Proto-Indo-European language - Verb

See also: Proto-Indo-European, Historical linguistics, Glottochronology. The possibility of common origin for some of these languages was first proposed by Marcus Zuerius van Boxhorn in 1647, proposing their derivation from "Scythian". However, the suggestions of van Boxhorn did not become widely known and were not pursued. The hypothesis was again proposed by Sir William Jones, who noticed similarities between four of the oldest languages known in his time, Latin, Greek, Sanskrit, and Persian. Systematic comparison of these an ...

See also:

Indo-European languages, Indo-European languages - Classification, Indo-European languages - Satem and Centum languages, Indo-European languages - Suggested superfamilies, Indo-European languages - History, Indo-European languages - Kurgan hypothesis, Indo-European languages - Competing hypotheses, Indo-European languages - Sound changes

Read more here: » Indo-European languages: Encyclopedia II - Indo-European languages - History

Many languags are too poorly attested to classify. Many of them are extinct and never will be known well enough to classify. Some may have been isolates; others were likely members of established families. Language family - Europe. Iberian (Spain) [extinct] Tartessian (Spain, Portugal) [extinct] Language family - Africa. Shabo Meroitic [extinct] Language family - Asia. Quti [extinct] ...

See also:

Language family, Language family - Largest families, Language family - Language families spoken, Language family - Africa and southwest Asia, Language family - Europe and north west and south Asia, Language family - East Southeast Asia and the Pacific, Language family - Australian Aboriginal languages, Language family - North America, Language family - Central America and South America, Language family - Language isolates oral languages, Language family - Central & South America, Language family - North America, Language family - Australia, Language family - Asia, Language family - Africa, Language family - Europe, Language family - Unclassified languages, Language family - Europe, Language family - Africa, Language family - Asia, Language family - South America, Language family - North America, Language family - Sign languages, Language family - Creole languages pidgins mixed languages and trade languages, Language family - Proposed language stocks, Language family - Other natural languages of special interest, Language family - Bibliography

Read more here: » Language family: Encyclopedia II - Language family - Unclassified languages