Proto-language
As a proto-language (even basic language, proto-language ) is called in linguistics a generally hypothetical form of language, from which have developed all languages of a genetic unit or language family. It is a by the methods of comparative linguistics - ie by the scientific comparison of belonging to the genetic unit individual languages - accessible hypothetical archetype of a genetic unit of languages.
In the strict sense it is not at a proto-language at the recent joint preform all used languages of a language family, not some older precursor ( these precursors are in fact a direct, comparative way, but only by internal reconstruction, possibly using early Lehnwortschichten, accessible ); to compare the common ancestor Most recent ( last common ancestor ) in genetics. The belonging to a family of languages "X" proto-language is called " Ur -X " or "Proto -X ", an earlier stage "pre- Ur - X". The distinction between " Ur -X " and "On- Ur -X " however, is not always followed ( especially if have diverted any other known language forms between prepress and "Proto - stage "). A proto-language is interpreted in the family tree metaphor as the root of a tree that represents the splitting of the language family vividly. Another metaphor, the family metaphor, means that one often called " daughter languages " (sometimes called "Follow languages " ) refers to the successor; the original language would thus be the "mother tongue", but because the term " mother tongue" already has a different meaning, it is rarely used in this sense. Occasionally, however, one finds instead parent language.
The term " proto-language " or " proto-language " may misleadingly suggest that it was a simple or " primitive " - or at least relative to the used languages " primitive " - language, but are original languages basically normal "modern", developed and very complex languages as the languages that were spoken to in the recent past in the world or are still spoken, and how - usually around the same time spoken - language, which is also written in ancient and medieval times by chance and handed in text documents up today were; ie languages with which one can express everything in principle, except that the reconstructions of original languages are more or less fragmentary and expressions for modern circumstances missing necessary. (Also pidgin languages are not in any way simple, "primitive" or basically restricted in their expression, even if they are more dependent on descriptions or waive a number of certain distinctive ways usually, unless they are dispensable for the specific purpose. ) proto languages in this sense, can be reconstructed in principle in many details, are therefore to be distinguished from " proto- language" speculative forms of language in the origin of language research, where there is much further in the past lying periods, long before the emergence all present and historically documented language families. Original languages in the sense discussed here, however, always belong to a narrowly defined, together detectable historically related, group of languages . Even the highly speculative proto -world language that would have to go back all spoken languages in historical times, probably does not even begin back to the period when languages have, as we know it developed.
Examples
A typical example of a proto-language is the reconstruction of Proto - Indo-European Indo-European from individual languages .
There are exceptions, however: So the Latin is extremely well documented as a proto-language of the Romance languages and not have to be laboriously reconstructed only. ( However, the common starting point of the Romance languages, not the classical Latin of the written tradition, but the speech or vulgar Latin of the early Middle Ages, which in turn can be reconstructed primarily only from the Romanesque individual languages . )
Following the example of Proto - Indo-European original languages are now available for many language families or genetic units have been reconstructed, eg Proto - Uralic, Proto - Turkic, Proto - Mongolian, Proto - Tungusic, Proto - Sino-Tibetan, Proto - Semitic, Proto - Afro-Asiatic, Proto - Nilo-Saharan (with restrictions), Proto - Bantu and many others. On the other hand, there are significant language families for which a reconstruction of the original language has not been done, for example, the Niger - Congo languages .
The term proto-language was coined in 1973 by the anthropologist Gordon Hewes.