"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."
A proto-language is a hypothetical ancestral language from which a group of related languages have evolved.
Family tree and language classification: Proto-languages belong to language families and understanding the family tree and how languages are classified in these families is important to studying Proto-languages.
Sound changes: Sound changes are systematic changes that occur over time within a language. These changes can help in reconstructing proto-languages.
Comparative method: The comparative method is a systematic approach for determining the relationships among languages by comparing their words and structures.
Reconstructing Proto-Languages: This involves taking cognates and using the comparative method to systematically reconstruct the original form of a word in its Proto-language.
Orthography: The study of spelling systems, which helps to explain different spelling conventions of languages and dialects.
Syntactic Reconstruction: This involves reconstructing the syntax of a Proto-language of a language family.
Linguistic Reconstruction: This involves taking cognates and applying the comparative method to make a reconstruct of the ancestral languages for that language family.
Morphology: Morphology is the branch of linguistics that studies the forms that words take and how they combine to form larger units like sentences.
Lexicostatistics: This involves using statistical techniques to determine the relative ages of languages and how they arose from their parent languages.
Language Contact: This refers to the influence that languages have on each other, often when people from different linguistic backgrounds come into contact with each other.
Comparative Phonology: This involves comparing the sounds of languages and finding where they differ, in what respects and how seemingly distinct sounds in a language evolve into another in a different language.
Proto-Linguistic Anthropology: This is the study of how the Proto-languages is shaped as a reflection of the culture and environment of the people who speak it.
Proto-Indo-European: The hypothetical ancestor of the Indo-European language family, which includes languages such as English, Spanish, Hindi, and Russian.
Proto-Semitic: The hypothetical ancestor of the Semitic language family, which includes Arabic, Hebrew, and Amharic.
Proto-Sino-Tibetan: The hypothetical ancestor of the Sino-Tibetan language family, which includes languages such as Chinese, Tibetan, and Burmese.
Proto-Afro-Asiatic: The hypothetical ancestor of the Afro-Asiatic language family, which includes languages such as Arabic, Hebrew, and Swahili.
Proto-Uralic: The hypothetical ancestor of the Uralic language family, which includes languages such as Finnish, Estonian, and Hungarian.
Proto-Altaic: The hypothetical ancestor of the Altaic language family, which includes languages such as Turkish, Mongolian, and Korean.
Proto-Dravidian: The hypothetical ancestor of the Dravidian language family, which includes languages such as Tamil, Telugu, and Kannada.
Proto-Austronesian: The hypothetical ancestor of the Austronesian language family, which includes languages such as Indonesian, Tagalog, and Hawaiian.
Proto-Niger-Congo: The hypothetical ancestor of the Niger-Congo language family, which includes languages such as Swahili, Yoruba, and Zulu.
Proto-Kartvelian: The hypothetical ancestor of the Kartvelian language family, which includes languages such as Georgian and Mingrelian.
"Proto-languages are usually unattested, or partially attested at best."
"They are reconstructed by way of the comparative method."
"In the family tree metaphor, a proto-language can be called a mother language."
"Occasionally, the German term Ursprache is used instead."
"It is from Ur- 'primordial, original', and Sprache 'language'."
"It is also sometimes called the common or primitive form of a language."
"For example, Common Germanic, Primitive Norse."
"In the strict sense, a proto-language is the most recent common ancestor of a language family, immediately before the family started to diverge into the attested daughter languages."
"It is therefore equivalent to the ancestral language or parental language of a language family."
"Moreover, a group of languages (such as a dialect cluster) which are not considered separate languages may also be described as descending from a unitary proto-language."
"A proto-language is a postulated ancestral language from which a number of attested languages are believed to have descended by evolution."
"A proto-language is a postulated ancestral language from which a number of attested languages are believed to have descended by evolution."
"They are reconstructed by way of the comparative method."
"Proto-languages are usually unattested, or partially attested at best."
"In the strict sense, a proto-language is the most recent common ancestor of a language family."
"Occasionally, the German term Ursprache is used instead."
"It is also sometimes called the common or primitive form of a language."
"In the family tree metaphor, a proto-language can be called a mother language."
"It is therefore equivalent with the ancestral language or parental language of a language family."