Proto-World language

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The term Proto-World language refers to the hypothetical, most recent common ancestor of all the world's languages – an ancient proto-language from which are derived all modern languages, all language families, and all dead languages known from the past 6,000 years of recorded history.

Though various attempts have been made to reconstruct Proto-World, the overwhelming consensus among historical linguists is that the methods used (such as mass lexical comparison) are unreliable and that if Proto-World ever existed, it was spoken so long ago that it would be impossible to reconstruct.

1 The idea
2 History
3 Criticisms
4 See also
5 References
6 External links

[edit] The idea

Assuming linguistic monogenesis, Proto-World is theorized to have been spoken roughly 50,000 to 100,000 years ago, the time speculated by archaeogenetics for the phylogenetic separation of the ancestors of all humans alive today. However, there is no guarantee that Proto-World is not younger (or older) than this, thereby making phylogenetics irrelevant to the dating of the language.

In such a scenario, Proto-World would spread from a small population out to other human populations long after they separated. Note also 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 the origin of language predates human phylogenetic separation.

The above arguments make assumptions about a Proto-World language based on anthropology, human migration patterns and the assumed faculty of speech in prehistoric humans. Direct linguistic statements about the Proto-World language, however, due to the time depth involved, are deemed impossible by most historical linguistics by any available method. For this reason, 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 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. This debate is essentially about the definition of the term language, and about whether the system of communication employed by human beings at the time of Mitochondrial Eve qualifies as a language in the narrow sense.

[edit] History

In 1917 the Russian linguist Nikolay Marr expounded a monogenetic theory of language that resolves all modern languages to four primordial exclamations.

Drawing on the works of Vladislav Illich-Svitych, the American linguist Joseph Greenberg claimed that long-distance relationships can be shown by applying a controversial approach he called "mass lexical comparison". The languages are compared by using a limited set of words (including function words and affixes) simply by means of counting cognates. He used this method to establish a classification of African languages. His work has generated considerable interest outside the linguistic community. It is still much debated.

Sergei Starostin [1] cautiously suggested a number of roots from the "Borean language" - the hypothetical ancestor of different language families of the northern hemisphere; possible etymological matches between what he considered the five major macrofamilies of the Old World, Eurasiatic, Afroasiatic, Sino-Caucasian and Austric with potential parallels from Amerind and several African language families added, but noting that it is still much too early to talk of a reconstructed "Proto-Borean" language, let alone Proto-World.

Merritt Ruhlen is one of the most vocal and controversial supporters of the Proto-World hypothesis.

[edit] Criticisms

According to most historical linguists, so far it has been impossible to show with statistical methods 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 (see also Swadesh list). Starostin did not use statistical methods but methods of internal reconstruction: reconstruction of the proto-language of a family in turn makes it possible to reconstruct the proto-language of a higher level.

In addition, situations are conceivable in which a completely new language may have arisen even at later times. There is no known instance of such an event for spoken languages, but the Nicaraguan Sign Language is an example of a non-articulate language which arose naturally among deaf children raised by hearing parents [2]. However some consider Nicaraguan Sign Language to be an invalid example of spontaneous language generation since pre-existing gestures used by the surrounding hearing-capable population may likely have been its basis. There is no known fully developed spoken language that has emerged spontaneously from a non-speaking population as far as is currently known.

[edit] See also

[edit] References

Ruhlen, Merritt. 1994. The Origin of Language: Tracing the Evolution of the Mother Tongue. New York: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

Hock, Hans Henrich & Joseph, Brian D. (1996). Language History, Language Change, and Language Relationship: An Introduction to Historical and Comparative Linguistics. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Chapter 17.