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The term Proto-World Language refers to the hypothetical latest common ancestor of all the world's languages, an ancient language from which all modern languages and language families – and usually including all known dead languages – derive. The concept is thus analogous to the widely accepted Proto-Indo-European, the ancestor of all the Indo-European languages as reconstructed by historical linguistics. Proto-World would have been spoken roughly 200,000 years ago, the time suggested by archaeogenetics for the phylogenetic separation of the ancestors of all humans alive today, mainly by analysis of mitochondrial DNA. Note that it would not necessarily be the first language spoken altogether, but only the latest common ancestor of all languages known today, and already may have looked back on a long evolution, and even may have existed alongside other languages of which no trace survived into historical times. For example, it is disputed whether or not Homo neanderthalensis had the faculty of speech. If they did, their language in all probability would not have been derived from Proto-World as defined above. Furthermore, if they had a language, this would substantiate the claim for the existence of Proto-World, without making any prediction as to its form, because it would imply that glottogony predates human phylogenetic separation.
However, due to the time depth involved, most historical linguists doubt that any available methods will ever uncover information about such a language, and proposals for attributes of Proto-World are considered to be on the fringe of linguistic studies. Many also question the underlying theory of monogenesis, the assumption that all known languages even do derive from a common ancestor, suggesting that language may have developed independently in different groups of early humans from proto-linguistic means of communication, thereby disputing the existence of Proto-World, or at least shifting focus to glottogonic issues.
1 History
The American linguist Joseph H. Greenberg claimed that long-distance relationships can be shown by applying an approach he called mass comparison . The languages are compared by using a limited set of words (including function words and affixAn affix is a morpheme that is attached to a base morpheme to form a word form. An affix can be a prefix (something attached at the front), a suffix (attached at the back), an infix (in between) or a circumfix (two parts, one in front, the other at the baes) simply by means of counting cognateCognates are words that have a common origin Examples of cognates are the words night (English), nacht ( German), noc ( Czech), noche ( Spanish), nuit ( French) and notte ( Italian), all meaning night and all deriving from a common Indo-European origin.s. He used this method to establish a classification of African languagesThe African languages are generally divided into four language families: Afro-Asiatic languages (Semitic, etc. Nilo-Saharan languages, possibly including Kadu languages Niger-Congo languages, possibly including Kordofanian languages Khoisan languages Uncl. His work has generated considerable interest outside the linguisticBroadly conceived, linguistics is the study of human language, and a linguist is someone who engages in this study. The study of linguistics can be thought of along three major axes, the endpoints of which are described below: Synchronic and diachronic Sy community. It is still much debated.
Traditional historical linguistics states that so far it has been impossible to show that all the world's languages are genetically related. Critics say that from a purely statistical point of view, even among any two unrelated languages, there will most likely be a number of similar-sounding words with similar meanings.
Therefore, the concept of a comparison of languages based exclusively on their respective vocabularies is widely considered flawed and on the outer fringe of linguistics, although studies based on exactly such comparisons are still frequently published.
2 See also
