User:Marshallsumter/Languages and language families

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Languages are the methods of human communication, either spoken or written, consisting of the use of words in a structured and conventional way.

Universals

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Def. a "set of languages which have evolved from a common ancestor"[1] is called a language family.

If "we are going to claim that something is universal, we had better test languages in a sample that includes as many language families as possible."[2]

"In our study, we had data from 31 languages in total, and these derived from 16 distinct language families. This sample represents only a fraction of the world’s languages, but in practice, a sample of this size and kind is sufficient to falsify many possible claimed universals. If Huh? were not universal in the sense we claim, chances are high that at least one of the 31 languages would lack it."[2]

Indo-European migrations

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This animated map gives an overall impression; in the details, many things are not exactly right, of the migrations of Indo-Europeans. Credit: Joshua Jonathan.{{free media}}

The animated map on the right gives an overall impression; in the details, many things are not exactly right, of the migrations of Indo-Europeans. The first migration into the Danube Valley, for example, did not proceed from the Yamna culture, which started almost a millennium later. But altogether, the idea is to give an general impression of the migrations.

Proto-Indo-European languages

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Classification of Indo-European languages. Red: Extinct languages. White: categories or unattested proto-languages. Left half: centum languages; right half: satem languages. Credit: Multiple authors, first version by Mandrak.

Proto-Indo-European (PIE)[3][4] is the linguistic reconstruction of the ancient common ancestor of the Indo-European languages, the most widely spoken language family in the world.

PIE is estimated to have been spoken as a single language from 4500 BC to 2500 BC[5] during the Late [Neolithic to Early Bronze Age, though estimates vary by more than a thousand years. According to the prevailing Kurgan hypothesis, the proto-Indo-European homeland of the Proto-Indo-Europeans may have been in the Pontic–Caspian steppe of eastern Europe. The linguistic reconstruction of PIE has also provided insight into the proto-Indo-European culture and proto-Indo-European religion of its speakers.[6]

No direct evidence of PIE exists – scholars have reconstructed PIE from its present-day descendants using the linguistic comparative method.[7]

Since there is a consistent correspondence of the initial consonants that emerges far too frequently to be coincidental, one can assume that these languages stem from a common parent language.[8]

A common ancestry of Sanskrit, Latin, and Greek has been postulated.[9]

In the 1500s, European visitors to the Indian subcontinent became aware of similarities between Indo-Iranian languages and European languages.[10]

A proposal was published for a proto-language ("Scythian") for the following language families: Germanic, Romance, Hellenic languages (Greek), Baltic, Slavic, Celtic, and Iranian.[11]

The analogy between Sanskrit and European languages has been demonstrated.[12]

Anatolian languages

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Under the Kurgan hypothesis, there are two possibilities for how the early Anatolian speakers could have reached Anatolia: from the north via the Caucasus, and from the west, via the Balkans,[13] the latter of which is considered somewhat more likely by Mallory (1989), Steiner (1990) and Anthony (2007). Statistical research by Quentin Atkinson and others using Bayesian inference and glottochronological markers favors an Indo-European origin in Anatolia, though the method's validity and accuracy are subject to debate.[14][15]

The following classification has proposed:[16]

  • Proto-Anatolian
    • Hittite
    • Palaic
    • Luwic
      • Luwian
      • Lycian
      • Milyan
      • Carian
      • Sidetic
      • Pisidian
    • (?) Lydian

Luwian

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File:Luwian hieroglyphic stone.jpg
This stone with script written in Luwian was found in an irrigation ditch in the Anatolia region of Turkey. Credit: James Osborne and Michele Massa.{{fairuse}}
File:Türkmen-Karahöyük archaeological mound.jpg
Full view shows the archaeological mound at Türkmen-Karahöyük. Credit: James Osborne and the University of Chicago.{{fairuse}}

Luwiya is the name of the region in which the Luwians lived, as Luwiya is attested, for example, in the Hittite laws.[17]

Several other Anatolian languages – particularly Carian, Lycian, Lydian and Milyan (also known as Lycian B or Lycian II) – are now usually identified as related to Luwian – and as mutually connected more closely than other constituents of the Anatolian branch.[18]

Luwic or Luwian (in the broad sense of the term), is one of three major sub-branches of Anatolian, alongside Hittite and Palaic.[18]

Luwian was among the languages spoken during the 2nd and 1st millennia BC by groups in central and western Anatolia and northern Syria.[19] Beginning in the 14th century BC, Luwian-speakers came to constitute the majority in the Hittite capital Hattusa.[20] It appears that by the time of the collapse of the Hittite Empire ca. 1180 BC, the Hittite king and royal family were fully bilingual in Luwian, and long after the extinction of the Hittite language, Luwian continued to be spoken in the Neo-Hittite states of Syria, such as Milid and Carchemish, as well as in the central Anatolian kingdom of Tabal that flourished in the 8th century BC.[21]

The earliest Indo-Europeans in northwest Anatolia were the horse-riders who came to this region from the north and founded Demircihöyük (Eskisehir Province) in Phrygia c. 3000 BC, were allegedly ancestors of the Luwians who inhabited Troy II, and spread widely in the Anatolian peninsula.[22]

"Türkmen-Karahöyük [is] a large Bronze and Iron Age mounded settlement [see second image down on the right] occupied between about 3,500 and 100 BC."[23]

"A local farmer [...] had found a big stone [in the first image on the right] with strange inscriptions while dredging a nearby irrigation canal the previous winter."[23]

"My colleague Michele Massa and I rushed straight there, and we could see it still sticking out of the water, so we jumped right down into the canal up to our waists wading around."[24]

"Right away it was clear it was ancient, and we recognized the script it was written in: Luwian, the language used in the Bronze and Iron ages in the area."[24]

"The survey team immediately identified a special hieroglyphic marking that symbolised the message came from a king."[23]

"The inscription boasted of defeating Phrygia, the kingdom ruled by King Midas, famous from the mythical story where he developed a golden touch."[23]

The "city covered 300 acres, making it one of the largest in Bronze and Iron Age Turkey."[24]

"We had no idea about this kingdom. In a flash, we had profound new information on the Iron Age Middle East."[24]

"Inside this mound are going to be palaces, monuments, houses. This was a marvelous, incredibly lucky find but it’s just the beginning."[24]

Major geographical language families

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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.

Families of Africa and Southwest Asia

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Afro-Asiatic languages

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Distribution of the Afro-Asiatic languages is indicated; pale yellow signifies areas without any languages in that family Credit: Listorien.{{free media}}

Afroasiatic (Afro-Asiatic), also known as Afrasian and traditionally as Hamito-Semitic (Chamito-Semitic)[25] or Semito-Hamitic,[26] is a large language family of about 300 languages and dialects.[27]

Niger-Congo languages

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Map shows the distribution of major Niger–Congo languages, where Pink-red is the Bantu subfamily. Credit: Sting.{{free media}}

The Niger–Congo languages constitute one of the world's major language families and Africa's largest in terms of geographical area, number of speakers and number of distinct languages.[28] It is generally considered to be the world's largest language family in terms of distinct languages,[29][30] ahead of Austronesian, although this is complicated by the ambiguity about what constitutes a distinct language; the number of named Niger–Congo languages listed by Ethnologue is 1,540.[31]

Nilo-Saharan languages

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Khoisan languages

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Families of Europe, and North Asia, West Asia, and South Asia

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Families of East Asia and Southeast Asia and the Pacific

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Families of the Americas

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Proposed Language Super-Families

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Creoles, Pidgins, and Trade languages

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Isolate languages

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Def. "[a] natural language with no proven relationship with another living language"[32] is called a language isolate.

Isolate languages share no apparent traits with any known language family.

  • Basque (The language of the Basques, people of unknown origin inhabiting the western Pyrenees and the Bay of Biscay in France and Spain.)
  • Burushaski
  • Ainu
  • Vascan

Sign languages

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Other Natural Languages of Special Interest

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Artificial Languages

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Besides the above languages that have arisen spontaneously out of the capability for vocal communication, there are also languages that share many of their important properties.

See also

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References

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  1. ↑ PierreAbbat (6 September 2007). "language family". San Francisco, California: Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. Retrieved 23 February 2019. {{cite web}}: |author= has generic name (help)
  2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 N. J. Enfield (May-June 2019). "Huh? Is That a Universal Word?". American Scientist 107 (8): 178-83. doi:10.1511/2019.107.3.178. https://www.americanscientist.org/article/huh-is-that-a-universal-word. Retrieved 16 May 2019. 
  3. ↑ "Archaeology et al: an Indo-European study" (PDF). School of History, Classics and Archaeology. The University of Edinburgh. 2018-04-11. Retrieved 2018-12-01.
  4. ↑ López-Menchero, Fernando (2012). "Proto-Indo-European Etymological Dictionary" (PDF). Indo-European Language Association. Retrieved 2018-12-01.
  5. ↑ Powell, Eric A. "Telling Tales in Proto-Indo-European". Archaeology. Retrieved 2017-07-30.
  6. ↑ Fortson, Benjamin W. (2004). Indo-European language and culture: an introduction. Malden, Mass: Blackwell. p. 16. ISBN 1405103159. OCLC 54529041. 
  7. ↑ "Linguistics – The comparative method science". Encyclopedia Britannica. Retrieved 27 July 2016.
  8. ↑ "Comparative linguistics". Encyclopædia Britannica. Retrieved 27 August 2016.
  9. ↑ "Sir William Jones British orientalist and jurist". Retrieved 3 September 2016.
  10. ↑ Auroux, Sylvain (2000). History of the Language Sciences. Berlin, New York: Walter de Gruyter. p. 1156. ISBN 3-11-016735-2. https://books.google.com/?id=yasNy365EywC&pg=PA1156&vq=stephens+sassetti&dq=3110167352. 
  11. ↑ Roger Blench, Archaeology and Language: methods and issues. In: A Companion To Archaeology. J. Bintliff ed. 52–74. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 2004.
  12. ↑ Wheeler, Kip. "The Sanskrit Connection: Keeping Up With the Joneses". Dr.Wheeler's Website. Retrieved 16 April 2013.
  13. ↑ While models assuming an Anatolian PIE homeland of course do not assume any migration at all, and the model assuming an Armenian homeland assumes straightforward immigration from the East.
  14. ↑ |url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110520041256/http://language.psy.auckland.ac.nz/files/gray_and_atkinson2003/grayatkinson2003.pdf |date=2011-05-20 |title=Language-tree divergence times support the Anatolian theory of Indo-European origin |author=Russell D. Gray & Quentin D. Atkinson
  15. ↑ Bouckaert, R.; Lemey, P.; Dunn, M.; Greenhill, S. J.; Alekseyenko, A. V.; Drummond, A. J.; Gray, R. D.; Suchard, M. A. et al. (23 August 2012). "Mapping the Origins and Expansion of the Indo-European Language Family". Science 337 (6097): 957–960. doi:10.1126/science.1219669. PMID 22923579. PMC 4112997. //www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4112997/. 
  16. ↑ Melchert, H. Craig (2012). "The Position of Anatolian" (PDF).
  17. ↑ Law number 21 of the Code of the Nesilim says, "If anyone steal a slave of a Luwian from the land of Luwia, and lead him here to the land of Hatti, and his master discover him, he shall take his slave only."
  18. ↑ 18.0 18.1 Anna Bauer, 2014, Morphosyntax of the Noun Phrase in Hieroglyphic Luwian, Leiden, Brill NV, pp. 9–10.
  19. ↑ Melchert 2003.
  20. ↑ Yakubovich 2010:307
  21. ↑ Melchert 2003, pp. 147-51
  22. ↑ Christoph Bachhuber (2013), James Mellaart and the Luwians: A Culture-(Pre)history,
  23. ↑ 23.0 23.1 23.2 23.3 Rob Waugh (24 February 2020). "Lost ancient kingdom uncovered in Turkey after farmer finds stone with strange inscriptions". United Kingdom: Yahoo News. Retrieved 25 February 2020.
  24. ↑ 24.0 24.1 24.2 24.3 24.4 James Osborne (24 February 2020). "Lost ancient kingdom uncovered in Turkey after farmer finds stone with strange inscriptions". United Kingdom: Yahoo News. Retrieved 25 February 2020.
  25. ↑ Katzner, Kenneth (2002). The Languages of the World. Routledge. p. 27. ISBN 1134532881. https://www.google.com/books?id=Lm8LFegafGIC&pg=PA27. Retrieved 20 December 2017. 
  26. ↑ Robert Hetzron, "Afroasiatic Languages" in Bernard Comrie, The World's Major Languages, 2009, ISBN 113426156X, p. 545
  27. ↑ Browse by Language Family. http://www.ethnologue.com/show_family.asp?subid=52-16. Retrieved 14 April 2018. 
  28. ↑ Irene Thompson, “Niger-Congo Language Family”, ”aboutworldlanguages”, March 2015
  29. ↑ Heine, Bernd; Nurse, Derek (3 August 2000). African Languages: An Introduction (in en). Cambridge University Press. pp. 11. ISBN 9780521666299. https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=C7XhcYoFxaQC&pg=PA11. 
  30. ↑ Ammon, Ulrich (2006). Sociolinguistics: An International Handbook of the Science of Language and Society. Walter de Gruyter. pp. 2036. ISBN 9783110184181. https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=LMZm0w0k1c4C&pg=PA2036. 
  31. ↑ Simons, Gary F. and Charles D. Fennig (eds.). 2018. Ethnologue: Languages of the World, Twenty-first edition. Dallas, Texas: SIL International.
  32. ↑ language isolate. San Francisco, California: Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. 31 August 2012. http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/language_isolate. Retrieved 11 June 2013. 
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