This document discusses the origins and development of languages and language families around the world. It notes that there are approximately 6,000 languages spoken globally today, which may have descended from a single proto-language or multiple proto-languages. The Indo-European language family is one such family, with English belonging to the Germanic subgroup. Comparative linguistics aims to reconstruct proto-languages by studying relationships between languages. The document outlines the 10 main subgroups of the Indo-European family and characteristics shared across these languages.

1. Language and Language Families
World Languages-- Today there are
approximately 6,000 languages spoken
around the world. We do not know for
certain if all of these derive originally from
one common ancestor or parent language.

2. Language Origins
• Monogenetic Theories – Language origins in
ONE common source, a Proto-Language.
• Garden of Eden– Common Source
• Tower of Babel—Language diversity as
punishment.

3. Language Origins
• Multi-Source Theories– Several Proto-
Languages emerge in different locations
around the world, either around the same
time or at different times.

4. Language Families
• We do know that many languages are related
to each other. We call these groups of
languages that have a common ancestor
Language Families.
• English is part of the Indo-European Language
Family.

5. Discovery of Language Families
• Although we don't have any evidence of the original
parent language (the culture that spoke it did not
possess writing), we call the original language Proto-
Indo-European.
• An Englishman, Sir William Jones (1786) was the first
to notice that some languages were related to each
other by comparing words in Sanskrit (a very ancient
I-E language) with words in Greek, Latin and English.

6. Comparative Linguistics
• Comparative Linguistics–
The study of the relationships between different
languages, often with the goal of
reconstructing or identifying the parent
language.

7. Indo-European
• There are 10 major groups within the Indo-
European Family of Languages.
• 1. Germanic (English is part of this group or
sub-family).
• 2. Italic– This includes the Romance (Roman)
languages of Latin (parent), French, Spanish,
and Portugese.

8. I-E Language Groups (10)
• 3. Celtic—This was one of the earliest and
most wide-spread of the IE languages
throughout Europe. Its descendants include
Irish Gaelic, Scots Gaelic, Breton, and
Welsh.
• 4. Hellenic—The languages and dialects of
Greece, including Attic-Ionic (Athens) from
with Modern Greek derives.

9. IE Language Groups (10)
• 5. Balto-Slavic– This includes most of the
major languages of Eastern Europe, including
Polish and Russian.
• 6. Albanian
• 7. Armenian

10. IE Language Groups (10)
• 8. Indo-Iranian: Some scholars divide this into
two separate groups.
• A. From this group we get most of the major
languages spoken in India, inluding Hindi and
Urdu.
• Sanskrit is the most ancient written form of IE
(written Hindu)

11. IE Language Groups (10)
• 8.B– We also get many of the most ancient
languages spoken in Iran, including Persian.
• 9. Anatolian—This is an ancient language
group. The most well-known language in this
group is Hittite, a language documented in the
Old Testament.

12. IE Language Groups (10)
• Tocharian– An isolated language (no longer
spoken) discovered from fragments of texts in
Western China.

13. Language Families (Two Models)
• Family Tree Model—Helpful because it shows
patterns of direct descent.
• Wave Model—Helpful because it shows more
complicated inter-relationships among
languages, how they influence each other
over time.

14. Proto Indo-European (Map)
• Major immigration probably began in 3rd or
4th millennium BCE.
• Location was probably in Northern Central
Europe (Southern Russia).
• Origins were perhaps among the Kurgans who
lived somewhere north of the Caspian Sea.

15. Characteristics
• Cognates-- I-E languages have similar word
forms:
• Numbers--
• Body parts-- heart, head, foot.
• Natural phenomena-- star, snow, sun, moon.
• Plant/animal names-- beech, bear, corn, wolf.
• Cultural terms-- yoke, mead, weave, sew.

16. Characteristics
• Highly inflected language–
Inflections on the end of words were used to
indicate such grammatical functions as case,
number tense, person, and mood.
The best examples of this are Sanskrit, Greek, and
Classical Latin.