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 ...

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

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See also:

Proto-Norse language, Proto-Norse language - Phonology, Proto-Norse language - Accent, Proto-Norse language - Vowels, Proto-Norse language - Consonants, Proto-Norse language - Sources of Proto-Norse, Proto-Norse language - Runic inscriptions, Proto-Norse language - Loan words, Proto-Norse language - Other, Proto-Norse language - Evolution from Proto-Germanic into Old Norse, Proto-Norse language - Proto-Germanic to Proto-Norse, Proto-Norse language - Proto-Norse to Old Norse

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Proto-Norse language - Accent. Proto-Norse had two accents. The stress accent fell on the first syllable. Proto-Norse also had a pitch accent inherited from the Proto-Indo-European language; for all purposes, the pitch accent is nothing but a curiosity, though still preserved in modern Swedish and Norwegian. Proto-Norse language - Vowels. A distinguishing feature of the Proto-Norse vowel system is the lack of sym ...

See also:

Proto-Norse language, Proto-Norse language - Phonology, Proto-Norse language - Accent, Proto-Norse language - Vowels, Proto-Norse language - Consonants, Proto-Norse language - Sources of Proto-Norse, Proto-Norse language - Runic inscriptions, Proto-Norse language - Loan words, Proto-Norse language - Other, Proto-Norse language - Evolution from Proto-Germanic into Old Norse, Proto-Norse language - Proto-Germanic to Proto-Norse, Proto-Norse language - Proto-Norse to Old Norse

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The Adamic language is a term for the hypothetical proto-language believed spoken by Adam and Eve in paradise, either identical with the language used by God to address Adam, or invented by Adam as nomothete (name-giver, Genesis 2:19). It is unclear whether the Bible assumes that this language was preserved by Adam's descendents until the confusion of tongues (Genesis 11:1-9), or that it began to evolve natu ...

Including:

• Adamic language - The Adamic language in Mormonism
• Adamic language - Reference
• Adamic language - External link

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Athabaskan or Athabascan (also Athapascan or Athapaskan) is the name of a large group of distantly related Native American peoples, also known as the Athabasca Indians or Athapaskes, located in two main Southern and Northern groups in western North America, and of their language family. The Athabaskan family is the largest family in North America in terms of number of languages and the number of speakers (the Uto-Aztecan family which extends into Mexico has many more speakers). In terms of terr ...

Including:

• Athabaskan languages - Languages
• Athabaskan languages - Family division
• Athabaskan languages - Areal list
• Athabaskan languages - Proto-Athabaskan
• Athabaskan languages - Phonology
• Athabaskan languages - Bibliography

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The voiceless alveolar lateral fricative is a type of consonantal sound, used in some spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents voiceless dental, alveolar, and postalveolar fricatives is ɬ, and the equivalent X-SAMPA symbol is K. The symbol ɬ is called "belted l" and should not be confused with "l with tilde", [ɫ], which c ...

Including:

• Voiceless alveolar lateral fricative - Features
• Voiceless alveolar lateral fricative - In English
• Voiceless alveolar lateral fricative - In other languages
• Voiceless alveolar lateral fricative - Welsh
• Voiceless alveolar lateral fricative - Xhosa and Zulu
• Voiceless alveolar lateral fricative - Tera
• Voiceless alveolar lateral fricative - Damin
• Voiceless alveolar lateral fricative - Proto-Semitic
• Voiceless alveolar lateral fricative - The voiceless lateral approximant

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Historical linguistics (also diachronic linguistics or comparative linguistics) is primarily the study of the ways in which languages change over time, by means of examining languages which are recognizably related through similarities such as vocabulary, word formation, and syntax, as well as the surviving records of ancient languages. Historical linguistics aims to classify the world's languages by their genetic affiliations and to trace the historic development of languages. Modern historical linguistics grew out of t ...

Including:

• Historical linguistics - Language evolution and the comparative method
• Historical linguistics - Non-comparative method theories
• Historical linguistics - Bibliography

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The Algonquian (also Algonkian) languages are a subfamily of Native American languages that includes most of the languages in the Algic language family (the two Algic languages that are not Algonquian are Wiyot and Yurok of northwestern California). Speakers of Algonquian languages stretch from the east coast of North America all the way to the Rocky Mountains. The proto-language from which all of the languages of the family descend, Proto-Algonquian, was spoken a ...

Including:

• Algonquian languages - Family division
• Algonquian languages - Notes
• Algonquian languages - Genetic and areal relationships
• Algonquian languages - Grammatical features
• Algonquian languages - Vocabulary
• Algonquian languages - Bibilography

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A bard is a poet or singer, in religious or feudal contexts. Bard - Etymology. The word is a loanword from Proto-Celtic *bardos, ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *gwerh2: "to raise the voice; praise". The word entered the West Germanic languages twice. The first recorded example is in 1449 from the Scottish Gaelic language into the Scots Language, denoting an itinerant musician, usually with a contemptuous connotation. A Scots ordnance of ca. 1500 orders that Including:

• Bard - Etymology
• Bard - Uses

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Indo-European speakers are thought by some scholars to have arrived at the plains of southern Sweden and Denmark, regarded to be the original dwelling-place of the Germanic peoples, during the early Bronze Age (about 4000 years ago). This is the only area where no pre-Germanic place names have been found. The Battle-axe people is the best candidate for this immigration. Another characteristic is various sound shifts called Grimm's law, which, due to the fact that it also affected Celtic loan words, probably began around 500 BC and must have been completed by the 2 ...

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Proto-Germanic language, Proto-Germanic language - Evolution of Proto-Germanic, Proto-Germanic language - Hybridization as conjectured cause, Proto-Germanic language - Non-Indo-European elements, Proto-Germanic language - Phonology, Proto-Germanic language - Consonants, Proto-Germanic language - Vowels, Proto-Germanic language - Morphology, Proto-Germanic language - Simplification of the inflectional system, Proto-Germanic language - Nouns, Proto-Germanic language - Adjectives, Proto-Germanic language - Determiners

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Greek is a Centum language, which would place a Graeco-Aryan protolanguage before Satemization, making it identical to late PIE. Proto-Greek does appear to have been affected by the general trend of Palatalization characteristic of the Satem group, evidenced for example by the (post-Mycenaean) change of labiovelars into dentals before e (e.g. kwe > te "and"), but the Satemizing influence appears to have reached Greek only after it had lost the palatovelars (i. ...

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Proto-Greek language, Proto-Greek language - Phonology, Proto-Greek language - Morphology, Proto-Greek language - Noun, Proto-Greek language - Pronoun, Proto-Greek language - Verb, Proto-Greek language - Numerals, Proto-Greek language - Example text

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The lexical stock of Proto-Slavic also includes a number of loanwords from the languages of various tribes and peoples that the Proto-Slavs came into contact with. However, the list of the borrowings, their sources and other details are under discussion. According to most sources, the earliest traceable lexical or semantic borrowings were loans from the Northeastern Iranian languages spoken by the Scythian, Alanian, and Sarmatian tribes. Most of these borrowings appertain to the religious sphere: *bogъ 'God' (cf. also derivatives lik ...

See also:

Proto-Slavic language, Proto-Slavic language - Origin, Proto-Slavic language - Phonology, Proto-Slavic language - Vowels, Proto-Slavic language - Consonants, Proto-Slavic language - Origin of vowels, Proto-Slavic language - Origin of consonants, Proto-Slavic language - Palatalizations, Proto-Slavic language - Loanwords

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According to some estimations, the Proto-Slavic language developed on the turn of 2nd and 1st millennium BC. There is much debate whether Proto-Slavic branched off directly from Proto-Indo-European, or whether the language branched off later from Proto-Balto-Slavic. Those who deny existence of Proto-Balto-Slavic emphasize fair lexical differences between both groups. While Slavic and Baltic both underwent Satemization, they preserve much archaic vocabulary. This is especially true for kinship terms and words for parts of human body. See the List of ...

See also:

Proto-Slavic language, Proto-Slavic language - Origin, Proto-Slavic language - Phonology, Proto-Slavic language - Vowels, Proto-Slavic language - Consonants, Proto-Slavic language - Origin of vowels, Proto-Slavic language - Origin of consonants, Proto-Slavic language - Palatalizations, Proto-Slavic language - Loanwords

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Proto-Slavic language - Vowels. There were 11 vowels in Late Proto-Slavic: i, ь, e, ę, ě, a, o, ǫ, ъ, y, u. Explanations: ь, ъ - yers, or ultrashort vowels, probably close to IPA [ɪ], [ɯ] respectively; ę, See also:

Proto-Slavic language, Proto-Slavic language - Origin, Proto-Slavic language - Phonology, Proto-Slavic language - Vowels, Proto-Slavic language - Consonants, Proto-Slavic language - Origin of vowels, Proto-Slavic language - Origin of consonants, Proto-Slavic language - Palatalizations, Proto-Slavic language - Loanwords

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The morphology (structure) of nouns and adjectives demonstrates no arresting alterations from the parent language. The Insular Celtic verb, on the other hand, shows a peculiar feature unknown in any other attested Indo-European language: verbs have different conjugational forms depending on whether they appear in absolute initial position in the sentence (Insular Celtic having Verb Subject Object or VSO word order) or whether they are preceded by a preverbal particle. The situation is most robustly attested in Old Irish, but it has remained to some extent in Scottish Gaelic a ...

See also:

Proto-Celtic language, Proto-Celtic language - Phonological reconstruction, Proto-Celtic language - Consonants, Proto-Celtic language - Vowels, Proto-Celtic language - Transition to Welsh, Proto-Celtic language - Morphology

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A related question concerns the possibility of linguistic monogenesis, a hypothesis that holds that there was one single protolanguage (the "Proto-World language") from which all other languages spoken by humans descend. The linguists Joseph Greenberg and Merritt Ruhlen have advocated such a position. The reconstruction of such a protolanguage, if it exists, would be the Holy Grail of historical linguistics. Some have gone as far as to claim that there exist etymological root words that are supposed to exist in all languages; one such ...

See also:

Origin of language, Origin of language - History, Origin of language - Anthropological hypotheses, Origin of language - Linguistic hypotheses, Origin of language - Monogenesis, Origin of language - Spontaneous emergence of grammar

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An example of the techniques used by supporters of Nostratic is given by a passage from 'The Nostratic Macrofamily, a Study in Distant Linguistic Relationship', by Allan R. Bomhard and John C. Kerns. New York, Mouton de Gruyter, 1994. Page 219: Proto-Nostratic *bar-/*ber- 'seed, grain': Proto-Indo-European *bhars- 'grain': Latin far 'spelt, grain'; Old Icelandic barr 'barley'; Old English bere 'barley'; Old Church Slavonic brasheno 'food'. Pokorny 1959:111 ...

See also:

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

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Proto-Greek language - Noun. The PIE dative, instrumental and locative cases are syncretized into a single dative case. Some desinences are innovated (dative plural -si from locative plural -su). Nominative plural -oi, -ai replaces late PIE -ōs, -ās. The superlative on -tatos becomes productive. The peculiar oblique stem gunaik- "women", attested from the Thebes tablets is probably Proto-Greek; it appears, at least as gunai- also in Armenian. See also:

Proto-Greek language, Proto-Greek language - Phonology, Proto-Greek language - Morphology, Proto-Greek language - Noun, Proto-Greek language - Pronoun, Proto-Greek language - Verb, Proto-Greek language - Numerals, Proto-Greek language - Example text

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Proto-Germanic language - Consonants. Since the fricatives ƀ, đ, ǥ are not in phonological contrast with voiced stops, they are also written as simple b, d, g. The most notable change in the Germanic languages, Grimm's law, is a chain shift of the stop consonants: /p/ > /f/; /b/ > /p/; /bʰ/ > /b/ /t/ > See also:

Proto-Germanic language, Proto-Germanic language - Evolution of Proto-Germanic, Proto-Germanic language - Hybridization as conjectured cause, Proto-Germanic language - Non-Indo-European elements, Proto-Germanic language - Phonology, Proto-Germanic language - Consonants, Proto-Germanic language - Vowels, Proto-Germanic language - Morphology, Proto-Germanic language - Simplification of the inflectional system, Proto-Germanic language - Nouns, Proto-Germanic language - Adjectives, Proto-Germanic language - Determiners

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Eduard Schwyzer in his Griechische Grammatik (1939, I.74f.) projected the initial lines of Plato's Apology into Proto-Greek: ὅτι μὲν ὑμεῖς, ὦ ἄνδρες Ἀθηναῖοι, πεπόνθατε ὑπὸ τῶν ἐμῶν κατηγόρων, wotti mān umme. ō aneres Athānaioi, pepasthe upo katāgoron meo. οὐκ οἶδα: ἐγὼ δ' οὖν ... οὕτω πιθ ...

See also:

Proto-Greek language, Proto-Greek language - Phonology, Proto-Greek language - Morphology, Proto-Greek language - Noun, Proto-Greek language - Pronoun, Proto-Greek language - Verb, Proto-Greek language - Numerals, Proto-Greek language - Example text

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