Languages and language families

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Notation

Notation: let the symbol Def. indicate that a definition is following.

Notation: let the symbols between [ and ] be replacement for that portion of a quoted text.

Universals

Def. "[a] set of languages which have evolved from a common ancestor"[1] is called a language family.

Major geographical language families

In the following, each "bulleted" item is a known language family. The geographic headings over them are meant solely as a tool for grouping families into collections more comprehensible than an unstructured list of the dozen or two of independent families. Geographic relationship is convenient for that purpose, but these headings are not a suggestion of any "super-families" phylogenetically relating the families named.

Families of Africa and Southwest Asia

Families of Europe, and North Asia, West Asia, and South Asia

Families of East Asia and Southeast Asia and the Pacific

Families of the Americas

Proposed Language Super-Families

Creoles, Pidgins, and Trade languages

Isolate languages

Def. "[a] natural language with no proven relationship with another living language"[2] is called a language isolate.

Isolate languages share no apparent traits with any known language family.

Sign languages

Other Natural Languages of Special Interest

Artificial Languages

Besides the above languages that have arisen spontaneously out of the capability for vocal communication, there are also languages that share many of their important properties.

See also

References

  1. ↑ "language family". Wiktionary (San Francisco, California: Wikimedia Foundation, Inc). June 6, 2013. http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/language_family. Retrieved 2013-06-11.
  2. ↑ "language isolate". Wiktionary (San Francisco, California: Wikimedia Foundation, Inc). August 31, 2012. http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/language_isolate. Retrieved 2013-06-11.

External links

This article is issued from Wikiversity - version of the Thursday, February 11, 2016. The text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share Alike but additional terms may apply for the media files.