Proto-language

In the tree model of historical linguistics, 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. Proto-languages are usually unattested, or partially attested at best. They are reconstructed by way of the comparative method.

For other uses, see Proto-language (disambiguation).

In the family tree metaphor, a proto-language can be called a mother language. Occasionally, the German term Ursprache (from Ur- "primordial, original", and Sprache "language", pronounced [ˈuːɐ̯ʃpʁaːxə] ⓘ) is used instead. It is also sometimes called the common or primitive form of a language (e.g. 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 with 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 (for whichever reasons) may also be described as descending from a unitary proto-language.

This article is issued from Wikipedia. The text is licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike. Additional terms may apply for the media files.