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Superfamily (linguistics)
In historical linguistics, a macrofamily, also called a superfamily or phylum, is a proposed genetic relationship grouping together language families (also isolates) in a larger scale classification.Campbell, Lyle and Mixco, Mauricio J. (2007), ''A Glossary of Historical Linguistics'', University of Utah Press/Edinburgh University Press. However, CampbellCampbell, Lyle (2004), ''Historical Linguistics: An Introduction'', Edinburgh University Press. regards this term as superfluous, preferring "language family" for those classifications for which there is consensus and "distant genetic relationship" for those for which there is no, or not yet, consensus, whether due to lack of documentation or scholarship of the constituent languages, or to an estimated time depth thought by many linguists to be too great for reconstruction. More rarely, the term has also been applied to an exceptionally old, large and diverse language family, such as Afro-Asiatic. Diakonoff, Igor M. (1996), "Some r ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Historical Linguistics
Historical linguistics, also termed diachronic linguistics, is the scientific study of language change over time. Principal concerns of historical linguistics include: # to describe and account for observed changes in particular languages # to reconstruct the pre-history of languages and to determine their relatedness, grouping them into language families ( comparative linguistics) # to develop general theories about how and why language changes # to describe the history of speech communities # to study the history of words, i.e. etymology Historical linguistics is founded on the Uniformitarian Principle, which is defined by linguist Donald Ringe as: History and development Western modern historical linguistics dates from the late-18th century. It grew out of the earlier discipline of philology, the study of ancient texts and documents dating back to antiquity. At first, historical linguistics served as the cornerstone of comparative linguistics, primarily as a t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Austric
The Austric languages are a proposed language family that includes the Austronesian languages spoken in Taiwan, Maritime Southeast Asia, the Pacific Islands, and Madagascar, as well as the Austroasiatic languages spoken in Mainland Southeast Asia and South Asia. A genetic relationship between these language families is seen as plausible by some scholars, but remains unproven. Additionally, the Kra–Dai languages and Hmong–Mien languages are included by some linguists, and even Japanese was speculated to be Austric in an early version of the hypothesis. History The Austric macrofamily was first proposed by the German missionary Wilhelm Schmidt in 1906. He showed phonological, morphological, and lexical evidence to support the existence of an Austric phylum consisting of Austroasiatic and Austronesian. Schmidt's proposal had a mixed reception among scholars of Southeast Asian languages, and received only little scholarly attention in the following decades. Research interes ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Historical Linguistics
Historical linguistics, also termed diachronic linguistics, is the scientific study of language change over time. Principal concerns of historical linguistics include: # to describe and account for observed changes in particular languages # to reconstruct the pre-history of languages and to determine their relatedness, grouping them into language families ( comparative linguistics) # to develop general theories about how and why language changes # to describe the history of speech communities # to study the history of words, i.e. etymology Historical linguistics is founded on the Uniformitarian Principle, which is defined by linguist Donald Ringe as: History and development Western modern historical linguistics dates from the late-18th century. It grew out of the earlier discipline of philology, the study of ancient texts and documents dating back to antiquity. At first, historical linguistics served as the cornerstone of comparative linguistics, primarily as a t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Borean Languages
Borean (also Boreal or Boralean)http://ehl.santafe.edu/EhlforWeb.pdf is a hypothetical linguistic macrofamily that encompasses almost all language families worldwide except those native to the Americas, Africa, Oceania, and the Andaman Islands. Its supporters propose that the various languages spoken in Eurasia and adjacent regions have a genealogical relationship, and ultimately descend from languages spoken during the Upper Paleolithic in the millennia following the Last Glacial Maximum. The name ''Borean'' is based on the Greek βορέας, and means "northern". This reflects the fact that the group is held to include most language families native to the northern hemisphere. Two distinct models of Borean exist: that of Harold C. Fleming and that of Sergei Starostin. Fleming's model The concept is due to Harold C. Fleming (1987), who proposed such a "mega-super-phylum" for the languages of Eurasia, termed ''Borean'' or ''Boreal'' in Fleming (1991) and later publications. In ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Classification Of Indigenous Languages Of The Americas
This is a list of different language classification proposals developed for the indigenous languages of the Americas. The article is divided into North, Central, and South America sections; however, the classifications do not correspond to these divisions. North America ''Glottolog'' 4.1 (2019) ''Glottolog'' 4.1 (2019) recognizes 42 independent families and 31 isolates in North America (73 total). The vast majority are (or were) spoken in the United States, with 26 families and 26 isolates (52 total). ;North American languages families proposed in ''Glottolog'' 4.1 ;Families (42) #Otomanguean (180) #Arawakan (78) # Uto-Aztecan (69) #Algic (46) # Athabaskan-Eyak-Tlingit (45) #Mayan (33) #Chibchan (27) #Salishan (25) # Mixe-Zoque (19) #Siouan (18) #Eskimo–Aleut (12) # Totonacan (12) # Cochimi-Yuman (11) #Iroquoian (11) # Miwok-Costanoan (11) #Kiowa-Tanoan (8) #Muskogean (7) # Pomoan (7) # Chumashan (6) #Wakashan (6) #Caddoan (5) #Misumalpan (5) #Sahaptian (5) # Xincan (5) #C ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Classification Of Southeast Asian Languages
There have been various classification schemes for Southeast Asian languages (see the articles for the respective language families). Language families The five established major language families are: * Kra–Dai * Austronesian *Austroasiatic * Hmong–Mien *Sino-Tibetan Isolates and small families A number of language groups in Arunachal Pradesh traditionally considered to be Sino-Tibetan (Tibeto-Burman) may in fact constitute independent language families or isolates (Roger Blench 2011). (See Language isolates and independent language families in Arunachal.) *Potential language isolates and independent language families in Arunachal: Digaro, Hrusish (including the Miji languagesBlench, Roger. 2015''The Mijiic languages: distribution, dialects, wordlist and classification'' m.s.), Midzu, Puroik, Siangic, and Kho-Bwa *The two Andamanese language families: Great Andamanese and Ongan *Language isolates and languages with isolate substrata of Southeast Asia: Kenaboi, Enggan ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Father Tongue Hypothesis
The Father Tongue hypothesis proposes that humans tend to speak their father's language. It is based on the discovery, in 1997, of a closer correlation between language and Y-chromosomal variation than between language and mitochondrial DNA variation. The initial work was performed on African and European samples by a team of population geneticists led by Laurent Excoffier. On the basis of these and similar findings by other geneticists, the hypothesis was elaborated by historical linguist George van Driem in 2010 that the teaching by a mother of her spouse's tongue to her children is a mechanism by which language has preferentially been spread over time. Focusing on prehistoric language shift in already settled areas, examples worldwide show that as little as 10–20% of prehistoric male immigration can (but need not) cause a language switch, indicating an elite imposition such as may have happened with the appearance of the first farmers or metalworkers in the Neolithic, Bronz ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
List Of Language Families
The following is a list of language families. It also includes language isolates, unclassified languages and other types. Major language families By number of languages ''Ethnologue'' 24 (2021) lists the following families that contain at least 1% of the 7,139 known languages in the world: # Niger–Congo (1,542 languages) (21.7%) # Austronesian (1,257 languages) (17.7%) # Trans–New Guinea (482 languages) (6.8%) #Sino-Tibetan (455 languages) (6.4%) #Indo-European (448 languages) (6.3%) #Australian 'dubious''(381 languages) (5.4%) #Afro-Asiatic (377 languages) (5.3%) #Nilo-Saharan 'dubious''(206 languages) (2.9%) #Oto-Manguean (178 languages) (2.5%) #Austroasiatic (167 languages) (2.3%) # Tai–Kadai (91 languages) (1.3%) # Dravidian (86 languages) (1.2%) #Tupian (76 languages) (1.1%) ''Glottolog'' 4.6 (2022) lists the following as the largest families, of 8,565 languages: # Atlantic–Congo (1,406 languages) # Austronesian (1,271 languages) # Indo-European (583 languages ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Language Family
A language family is a group of languages related through descent from a common ''ancestral language'' or ''parental language'', called the proto-language of that family. The term "family" reflects the tree model of language origination in historical linguistics, which makes use of a metaphor comparing languages to people in a biological family tree, or in a subsequent modification, to species in a phylogenetic tree of evolutionary taxonomy. Linguists therefore describe the ''daughter languages'' within a language family as being ''genetically related''. According to '' Ethnologue'' there are 7,151 living human languages distributed in 142 different language families. A living language is defined as one that is the first language of at least one person. The language families with the most speakers are: the Indo-European family, with many widely spoken languages native to Europe (such as English and Spanish) and South Asia (such as Hindi and Bengali); and the Sino-Tibetan famil ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ural-Altaic
Ural-Altaic, Uralo-Altaic or Uraltaic is a linguistic convergence zone and former language-family proposal uniting the Uralic and the Altaic (in the narrow sense) languages. It is generally now agreed that even the Altaic languages do not share a common descent: the similarities among Turkic, Mongolic and Tungusic are better explained by diffusion and borrowing. The term continues to be used for the central Eurasian typological, grammatical and lexical convergence zone. Indeed, "Ural-Altaic" may be preferable to "Altaic" in this sense. For example, J. Janhunen states that "speaking of 'Altaic' instead of 'Ural-Altaic' is a misconception, for there are no areal or typological features that are specific to 'Altaic' without Uralic."Stefan Georg (2017) "The Role of Paradigmatic Morphology in Historical, Areal and Genealogical Linguistics: Thoughts and Observations in the Margin of Paradigm Change in ''The Transeurasian languages and Beyond'' (Robbeets and Bisang, eds.)." ''Journal ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Nostratic
Nostratic is a controversial hypothetical macrofamily, which includes many of the indigenous language families of Eurasia, although its exact composition and structure vary among proponents. It typically comprises Kartvelian languages, Kartvelian, Indo-European languages, Indo-European and Uralic languages, Uralic languages; some languages from the similarly controversial disputed Altaic languages, Altaic family; the Afroasiatic languages spoken in North Africa, the Horn of Africa, the Arabian Peninsula and the Near East as well as the Dravidian languages of the Indian Subcontinent (sometimes also Elamo-Dravidian languages, Elamo-Dravidian, which connects India and the Iranian Plateau). The hypothetical ancestral language of the Nostratic family is called Proto-Nostratic. According to Allan Bomhard, Proto-Nostratic would have been spoken between 15,000 and 12,000 BCE, in the Epipaleolithic period, close to the end of the last glacial period, perhaps in or near the Fertile Cre ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Eurasiatic
Eurasiatic is a proposed language macrofamily that would include many language families historically spoken in northern, western, and southern Eurasia. The idea of a Eurasiatic superfamily dates back more than 100 years. Joseph Greenberg's proposal, dating to the 1990s, is the most widely discussed version. In 2013, Mark Pagel and three colleagues published what they believe to be statistical evidence for a Eurasiatic language family. The branches of Eurasiatic vary between proposals, but typically include Altaic ( Mongolic, Tungusic and Turkic), Chukchi-Kamchatkan, Eskimo–Aleut, Indo-European, and Uralic—although Greenberg uses the controversial Uralic-Yukaghir classification instead. Other branches sometimes included are the Kartvelian and Dravidian families, as proposed by Pagel et al., in addition to the language isolates Nivkh, Etruscan and Greenberg's "Korean–Japanese–Ainu". Some proposals group Eurasiatic with even larger macrofamilies, such as Nostratic; agai ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
