A proto-language (sometimes known as parent language) in the tree model of historical linguistics is the common ancestor of the languages that form a language family. Occasionally, the German term Ursprache (from Ur- "primordial" and Sprache "language", pronounced [ˈʔuːɐ.ʃpʁaː.xə]) is used instead.
Often the proto-language is not known directly. In such cases, it may be reconstructed by comparing different members of the language family through the comparative method. The level of completeness of the reconstruction achieved varies, depending on how complete the evidence is from the descendant languages and on the quality of the effort of the linguists working on it. Some of the many unattested proto-languages for which reconstructions have been devised are Proto-Indo-European, Proto-Uralic, and Proto-Dravidian.
In other cases, the proto-language is 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 and Spanish. Likewise, Proto-Norse, the ancestor of the modern Scandinavian languages, is attested, albeit in fragmentary form, in ancient runic inscriptions. 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.
The first person to offer systematic reconstructions of an unattested proto-language was August Schleicher; he did so for Proto-Indo-European in 1861.[1]
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Normally, the term "Proto-X" refers to the ancestor of a group of languages, occasionally attested but most commonly reconstructed through the comparative method. An earlier stage of the same language, reconstructed through the method of internal reconstruction, is termed "Pre-X". This terminology is used, for example, in the case of Proto-Indo-European and Pre-Indo-European; likewise for Proto-Germanic and Pre-Germanic. As Pre-X is sometimes also used for a postulated substratum (for example Pre-Germanic can also refer a hypothetical Germanic substratum), the more precise term Pre-Proto-X is sometimes used, for a stage older than the last common ancestor of the attested language varieties employed in the reconstruction.
When multiple historical stages of a single language exist, the oldest attested stage is normally termed "Old X" (e.g. "Old English", "Old Korean"). For an earlier, hypothetical stage, reconstructed through the method of internal reconstruction, terminology differs, with some authors using "Proto-X" (e.g. "Proto-English") and others using "Pre-X" (e.g. "Pre-English"). The case of Irish is somewhat different; the language known as Old Irish is the language in which the first significant texts are known, but an older stage named Primitive Irish is also attested, though much more sparsely. This is similar to the situation of Old Norse and Proto-Norse, where both are attested but the latter only fragmentarily.