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).[1]
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.[2]
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.
Definition and verification
Typically, the proto-language is not known directly. It is by definition a linguistic reconstruction formulated by applying the comparative method to a group of languages featuring similar characteristics.[3] The tree is a statement of similarity and a hypothesis that the similarity results from descent from a common language.
The comparative method, a process of deduction, begins from a set of characteristics, or characters, found in the attested languages. If the entire set can be accounted for by descent from the proto-language, which must contain the proto-forms of them all, the tree, or phylogeny, is regarded as a complete explanation and by Occam's razor, is given credibility. More recently, such a tree has been termed "perfect" and the characters labelled "compatible".
No trees but the smallest branches are ever found to be perfect, in part because languages also evolve through horizontal transfer with their neighbours. Typically, credibility is given to the hypotheses of highest compatibility. The differences in compatibility must be explained by various applications of the wave model. The level of completeness of the reconstruction achieved varies, depending on how complete the evidence is from the descendant languages and on the formulation of the characters by the linguists working on it. Not all characters are suitable for the comparative method. For example, lexical items that are loans from a different language do not reflect the phylogeny to be tested, and, if used, will detract from the compatibility. Getting the right dataset for the comparative method is a major task in historical linguistics.
In a few fortuitous instances, which have been used to verify the method and the model (and probably ultimately inspired it[citation needed]), a literary history exists from as early as a few millennia ago, allowing the descent to be traced in detail. The early daughter languages, and even the proto-language itself, may be attested in surviving texts. For example, Latin is the proto-language of the Romance language family, which includes such modern languages as French, Italian, Portuguese, Romanian, Catalan and Spanish. Likewise, Proto-Norse, the ancestor of the modern Scandinavian languages, is attested, albeit in fragmentary form, in the Elder Futhark. Although there are no very early Indo-Aryan inscriptions, the Indo-Aryan languages of modern India all go back to Vedic Sanskrit (or dialects very closely related to it), which has been preserved in texts accurately handed down by parallel oral and written traditions for many centuries.
Normally, the term "Proto-X" refers to the last common ancestor of a group of languages, occasionally attested but most commonly reconstructed through the comparative method, as with Proto-Indo-European and Proto-Germanic. An earlier stage of a single language X, reconstructed through the method of internal reconstruction, is termed "Pre-X", as in Pre–Old Japanese.[5] It is also possible to apply internal reconstruction to a proto-language, obtaining a pre-proto-language, such as Pre-Proto-Indo-European.[6]
Both prefixes are sometimes used for an unattested stage of a language without reference to comparative or internal reconstruction. "Pre-X" is sometimes also used for a postulated substratum, as in the Pre-Indo-European languages believed to have been spoken in Europe and South Asia before the arrival there of Indo-European languages.
When multiple historical stages of a single language exist, the oldest attested stage is normally termed "Old X" (e.g. Old English and Old Japanese). In other cases, such as Old Irish and Old Norse, the term refers to the language of the oldest known significant texts. Each of these languages has an older stage (Primitive Irish and Proto-Norse respectively) that is attested only fragmentarily.
Accuracy
There are no objective criteria for the evaluation of different reconstruction systems yielding different proto-languages. Many researchers concerned with linguistic reconstruction agree that the traditional comparative method is an "intuitive undertaking."[7]
The bias of the researchers regarding the accumulated implicit knowledge can also lead to erroneous assumptions and excessive generalization. Kortlandt (1993) offers several examples in where such general assumptions concerning "the nature of language" hindered research in historical linguistics. Linguists make personal judgements on how they consider "natural" for a language to change, and
"[as] a result, our reconstructions tend to have a strong bias toward the average language type known to the investigator."
Such an investigator finds themselves blinkered by their own linguistic frame of reference.
The advent of the wave model raised new issues in the domain of linguistic reconstruction, causing the reevaluation of old reconstruction systems and depriving the proto-language of its "uniform character." This is evident in Karl Brugmann's skepticism that the reconstruction systems could ever reflect a linguistic reality.[8]Ferdinand de Saussure would even express a more certain opinion, completely rejecting a positive specification of the sound values of reconstruction systems.[9]
In general, the issue of the nature of proto-language remains unresolved, with linguists generally taking either the realist or the abstractionist position. Even the widely studied proto-languages, such as Proto-Indo-European, have drawn criticism for being outliers typologically with respect to the reconstructed phonemic inventory. The alternatives such as glottalic theory, despite representing a typologically less rare system, have not gained wider acceptance, and some researchers even suggest the use of indexes to represent the disputed series of plosives. On the other end of the spectrum, Pulgram (1959:424) suggests that Proto-Indo-European reconstructions are just "a set of reconstructed formulae" and "not representative of any reality". In the same vein, Julius Pokorny in his study on Indo-European, claims that the linguistic term IE parent language is merely an abstraction, which does not exist in reality and should be understood as consisting of dialects possibly dating back to the paleolithic era in which those dialects formed the linguistic structure of the IE language group.[10] In his view, Indo-European is solely a system of isoglosses which bound together dialects which were operationalized by various tribes, from which the historically attested Indo-European languages emerged.[10]
Proto-languages evidently remain unattested. As Nicholas Kazanas[de] puts it:
"The first fallacy is that the comparative method is 'scientific' and can offer predictions."
[...]
"Another fallacy is very subtle: it is the tacit assumption that the reconstructed forms are actual and experts in this imaginary field discuss and argue among themselves as if they are realities."[11]
↑ Koerner, E F K (1999), Linguistic historiography: projects & prospects, Amsterdam studies in the theory and history of linguistic science; Ser. 3, Studies in the history of the language sciences, Amsterdam [u.a.]: J. Benjamins, p.109, First, the historical linguist does not reconstruct a language (or part of the language) but a model which represents or is intended to represent the underlying system or systems of such a language.
↑ Schwink, Frederick W.: Linguistic Typology, Universality and the Realism of Reconstruction, Washington 1994. "Part of the process of 'becoming' a competent Indo-Europeanist has always been recognized as coming to grasp 'intuitively' concepts and types of changes in language so as to be able to pick and choose between alternative explanations for the history and development of specific features of the reconstructed language and its offspring."
↑ Kazanas N. 2009 Indo-Aryan Origins… N. Delhi, Aditya Prakashan. 2015 Vedic & Indo-European Studies N. Delhi, Aditya Prakashan.
Related Research Articles
In linguistics, the comparative method is a technique for studying the development of languages by performing a feature-by-feature comparison of two or more languages with common descent from a shared ancestor and then extrapolating backwards to infer the properties of that ancestor. The comparative method may be contrasted with the method of internal reconstruction in which the internal development of a single language is inferred by the analysis of features within that language. Ordinarily, both methods are used together to reconstruct prehistoric phases of languages; to fill in gaps in the historical record of a language; to discover the development of phonological, morphological and other linguistic systems and to confirm or to refute hypothesised relationships between languages.
The Indo-European languages are a language family native to the overwhelming majority of Europe, the Iranian plateau, and the northern Indian subcontinent. Some European languages of this family—English, French, Portuguese, Russian, Dutch, and Spanish—have expanded through colonialism in the modern period and are now spoken across several continents. The Indo-European family is divided into several branches or sub-families, of which there are eight groups with languages still alive today: Albanian, Armenian, Balto-Slavic, Celtic, Germanic, Hellenic, Indo-Iranian, and Italic/Romance; and another nine subdivisions that are now extinct.
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. The divergence of a proto-language into daughter languages typically occurs through geographical separation, with different regional dialects of the proto-language spoken by different speech communities undergoing different language changes and thus becoming distinct languages from each other.
Nostratic is a hypothetical language macrofamily including many of the language families of northern Eurasia. Though a historically important proposal, in a contemporary context it is typically considered a fringe theory. Although the exact composition varies based on proponent, it typically comprises Kartvelian, Indo-European and Uralic languages; some languages from the similarly controversial Altaic family; the Afroasiatic languages; as well as the Dravidian languages.
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
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
to explore the impact of cultural and social factors on language evolution.
The laryngeal theory is a theory in historical linguistics positing that Proto-Indo-European had a number of laryngeal consonants that are not reconstructable by direct application of the comparative method to the Indo-European family. The 'missing' sounds remain consonants of an indeterminate place of articulation towards the back of the mouth, though further information is difficult to derive. Proponents aim to use the theory to:
Proto-Germanic is the reconstructed proto-language of the Germanic branch of the Indo-European languages.
August Schleicher was a German linguist. His great work was A Compendium of the Comparative Grammar of the Indo-European Languages in which he attempted to reconstruct the Proto-Indo-European language. To show how Indo-European might have looked, he created a short tale, Schleicher's fable, to exemplify the reconstructed vocabulary and aspects of Indo-European society inferred from it.
Proto-Indo-European (PIE) is the reconstructed common ancestor of the Indo-European language family. No direct record of Proto-Indo-European exists; its proposed features have been derived by linguistic reconstruction from documented Indo-European languages.
Mass comparison is a method developed by Joseph Greenberg to determine the level of genetic relatedness between languages. It is now usually called multilateral comparison. Mass comparison has been referred to as a "methodological deception" and is rejected by most linguists, and its continued use is primarily restricted to fringe linguistics.
The Balto-Slavic languages form a branch of the Indo-European family of languages, traditionally comprising the Baltic and Slavic languages. Baltic and Slavic languages share several linguistic traits not found in any other Indo-European branch, which points to a period of common development and origin.
Indo-European studies is a field of linguistics and an interdisciplinary field of study dealing with Indo-European languages, both current and extinct. The goal of those engaged in these studies is to amass information about the hypothetical proto-language from which all of these languages are descended, a language dubbed Proto-Indo-European (PIE), and its speakers, the Proto-Indo-Europeans, including their society and Proto-Indo-European mythology. The studies cover where the language originated and how it spread. This article also lists Indo-European scholars, centres, journals and book series.
Comparative linguistics is a branch of historical linguistics that is concerned with comparing languages to establish their historical relatedness.
Proto-Indo-European society is the reconstructed culture of Proto-Indo-Europeans, the ancient speakers of the Proto-Indo-European language, ancestor of all modern Indo-European languages.
The glottalic theory is that Proto-Indo-European had ejective or otherwise non-pulmonic stops, *pʼ *tʼ *kʼ, instead of the plain voiced ones, *b *d *ɡ as hypothesized by the usual Proto-Indo-European phonological reconstructions.
Two languages have a genetic relationship, and belong to the same language family, if both are descended from a common ancestor through the process of language change, or one is descended from the other. The term and the process of language evolution are independent of, and not reliant on, the terminology, understanding, and theories related to genetics in the biological sense, so, to avoid confusion, some linguists prefer the term genealogical relationship.
Linguistic reconstruction is the practice of establishing the features of an unattested ancestor language of one or more given languages. There are two kinds of reconstruction:
Internal reconstruction is a method of reconstructing an earlier state in a language's history using only language-internal evidence of the language in question.
In historical linguistics, the Germanic parent language (GPL), also known as Pre-Germanic Indo-European (PreGmc) or Pre-Proto-Germanic (PPG), is the reconstructed language of the Germanic branch of the Indo-European language family that was spoken c. 2500 BC – c. 500 BC, after the branch had diverged from Proto-Indo-European but before it evolved into Proto-Germanic.
Languages of the Indo-European family are classified as either centum languages or satem languages according to how the dorsal consonants of the reconstructed Proto-Indo-European language (PIE) developed. An example of the different developments is provided by the words for "hundred" found in the early attested Indo-European languages. In centum languages, they typically began with a sound, but in satem languages, they often began with.
References
Lehmann, Winfred P. (1993), Theoretical Bases of Indo-European Linguistics, London, New York: Taylor & Francis Group (Routledge)
Schleicher, August (1861–1862), Compendium der vergleichenden Grammatik der indogermanischen Sprachen: 2 volumes, Weimar: H. Boehlau (Reprint: Minerva GmbH, Wissenschaftlicher Verlag), ISBN3-8102-1071-4
Pulgram, Ernst (1959), "Proto-Indo-European Reality and Reconstruction", Language, 35 (Jul.–Sept): 421–426, doi:10.2307/411229, JSTOR411229
Pokorny, Julius (1953), Allgemeine und Vergleichende Sprachwissenschaft – Indogermanistik[General and Comparative Linguistics - Indo-European Studies], vol.2, Bern: A. Francke AG Verlag, pp.79–80
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