LANGUAGE
Terms
undefined, object
copy deck
- reverse reconstruction
- Process of tracing a language's diffusion. The process begins with the most recent places of the language's existence and moves backward through time, comparing geographic places and groups of people using the same or similar words.
- language branch
- A collection of languages related through a common ancestor that existed several thousand years ago. Differences are not as extensive or old as with language families, and archaeological evidence can confirm that these derived from the same family.
- language
- a system of communication through the use of speech, a collection of sounds understood by a group of people to have the sam meaning
- ideograms
- the system of writing used in China and other East Asian countries in which each symbol represents an idea or a concept rather than a specific sound, as is the case with letters in English
- shatter belts
- an area of instability between regions with opposing political and cultural values
- language convergence
- the collapsing of two languages into one resulting from the consistent spatial interaction of peoples with different languages; opposite of language divergence
- conquest theory
- which holds that early speakers of Proto-Indo-European spread westward on horseback, overpowering earlier inhabitants and beginning the diffusion and differentiation of Indo-European tongues
- official language
- the language adopted for use by the government for the conduct of business and publication of documents
- generic toponyms
- The desriptive part of many place names, often repeated throughout a culture area
- multilingual states
- countries in which more than one language is in use
- language divergence
- this type of language can form where a lack of spatial interation among speakers of a language breaks the language into dialects and then continued isolation divided the language into discrete languages
- monolingual states
- countries in which only one language is spoken.
- standard language
- the form of a language used for official government business, education, and mass communications
- pidgin language
- a form of speech that adopts a simplified grammar and limited vocabulary of a lingua franca, used for communication among speakers of two different languages
- isoglosses
- boundaries that seperates regions in which different language usages predominate
- language families/groups
- a collection of languages related to each other through a common ancestor long before recorded history
- lingua franca
- a language mutually understood and commonly used in trade by people who have different native languages
- polyglot
- a person who speaks more than one language
- toponyms
- the name given to a portion of Earth's surface
- dialect
- a regional variety of language distinguished by vocabulary, spelling, and pronuncation
- isolated language
- a language that is unrelated to any other languages and therefore not attached to any language family
- creole
- a language that results from the mixing of a colonizer's language with the indigenous language of the people being dominated
- language replacement
- one language is replaced by another, assimilation
- monoglots
- knowing only one language
- Renfrew hypothesis
- hypothesis developed by British scholar Colin Renfrew where in he proposed that three areas in and near the first agricultural hearth, the Fertile Crescent, gave rise to 3 lang. families:Europe's indo-European lang. North African and Arabian languages and the languages in present-day Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan and India.
- linguistic refugee areas
- An area protected by isolation or inhospitable environmental conditions in which a language or dialect has survived
- agriculture theory
- with increased food supply and increased population, speakers from the hearth of Indo-European languages migrated into Europe