14
votes
Apparent sound crespondences between Eurasian, Trans-New-Guinean, Pama-Nyungan and Burushaski
I don't see any regular correspondences in the data you've presented.
A regular correspondence involves a series of forms in which, whenever language A has sound X, language B has sound Y. For example,...
- 10.9k
13
votes
Accepted
State of language in the hunter-gatherer era of Europe / Levant?
There is no controversy over the existence of the contemporary language faculty as recently as 40 Kya, though we should omit speculations about persistence of Neanderthals and their language capacity ...
- 83.3k
8
votes
Is Austronesian the closest relative to PIE?
Usually the most close relative to PIE among other Eurasiatic languages is considered Chukchi-Kamchadal family.
You probably know this already, but the idea of a "Eurasiatic" language family isn't ...
- 68.2k
7
votes
Is Sanskrit the origin of every language
No.
Sanskrit is a member of the Indo-European language family spoken throughout most of Europe and much of South and Southwest Asia.
It is not the origin of this family. The clearest demonstrations of ...
- 9,271
6
votes
Have other language families been mapped like Proto-Indo-European has?
Yes, there are very many researchers working to reconstruct proto-languages other than Indo-European. There are a number of languages that are not clearly related to any other language (e.g. ...
- 83.3k
5
votes
Apparent sound crespondences between Eurasian, Trans-New-Guinean, Pama-Nyungan and Burushaski
Below are my comments on the Eurasiatic data, and why I think @Anixx's forms are not Proto-Eurasiatic numerals. As I am not a specialist of Burushaski, Trans-New-Guinean, or Pama-Nyungan, I cannot ...
- 159
5
votes
Accepted
Could the proto-human language still play a role in the interlingual communication?
This part seems to have some presuppositions that need to be corrected:
Is there a non-negligible chance that this correct guess could be
actually caused by the shared root of the proto-human ...
- 83.3k
4
votes
Accepted
Does the Cosmic Hunt myth imply the existence of a Proto-Human language?
We know that myth can diffuse across linguistic families (especially clear in the historical era with the spread of proselytising religions such as Buddhism, Christianity, & Islam and their ...
- 9,271
3
votes
Could the initial d- in the word for tongue be originally a prefix?
Unlikely. Almost all of the descendants of *dn̥ǵʰwéh₂s (a truly wonderful mess of diacritics, that) show a dental consonant at the beginning; the main ones that don't are Latin and Armenian, and both ...
- 68.2k
3
votes
Did Proto-Sino-Tibetan and Proto-Indo-European languages have the same origin?
The interesting question here is whether humans developed a common language prior to migration from Africa. This is not a linguistic question in the strict sense, it is a question of human evolution ...
- 83.3k
3
votes
What's the reconstruction of the word for fire in proto-Australian?
Unfortunately, there's no real consensus on any sort of "Proto-Australian" reconstruction. Some linguists like Dixon proposed "Australian" as an actual language family, with a ...
- 68.2k
2
votes
Accepted
Have other language families been mapped like Proto-Indo-European has?
There are a great many language families studied by linguists, and part of the demonstration of their relatedness typically involves the classification of the members of that family into subgroups.
...
- 9,271
1
vote
Could it be that the pronoun *eǵh₂om ("I") in PIE is not an innovation?
I think, it is generally believed that the word for "I" in PIE was an innovation
The most usual opinion is that internal reconstruction of a proto language and reconstruction beyond a ...
- 1,403
1
vote
Did Proto-Sino-Tibetan and Proto-Indo-European languages have the same origin?
The short answer is: Yes, they probably have a common origin, but we are unable to make any solid claims about that common origin.
A bit longer story: Historical linguistics has a time depth of 5–10 k ...
- 30.4k
1
vote
What idea(s) do you have of 'Proto' in discussions in linguistics?
There's hardly any discernable question. I presume you want to know what "proto" meant.
"Proto" is not used as a word stand-alone in Linguistics, nor anywhere else in English that ...
- 1,403
1
vote
Why do most words for "mother", across languages, start with an [m], and for "father" with [p]/[b], but not vice versa?
Let me add to these already great answers what I read in a paper (I cannot recall, which): m is a nasal sound that can be produced while suckling on the breast, and suckling involves both lips (hence ...
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