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  2. Origin of language - Wikipedia

    en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Origin_of_language

    The origin of language, its relationship with human evolution, and its consequences have been subjects of study for centuries.Scholars wishing to study the origins of language must draw inferences from evidence such as the fossil record, archaeological evidence, contemporary language diversity, studies of language acquisition, and comparisons between human language and systems of animal ...

  3. Evolution of languages - Wikipedia

    en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolution_of_languages

    The highly diverse Nilo-Saharan languages, first proposed as a family by Joseph Greenberg in 1963 might have originated in the Upper Paleolithic. [1] Given the presence of a tripartite number system in modern Nilo-Saharan languages, linguist N.A. Blench inferred a noun classifier in the proto-language, distributed based on water courses in the Sahara during the "wet period" of the Neolithic ...

  4. Origin of speech - Wikipedia

    en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Origin_of_speech

    Apical, 18. Sub-apical. The origin of speech differs from the origin of language because language is not necessarily spoken; it could equally be written or signed. Speech is a fundamental aspect of human communication and plays a vital role in the everyday lives of humans.

  5. History of linguistics - Wikipedia

    en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_linguistics

    Modern linguistics did not begin until the late 18th century, and the Romantic or animist theses of Johann Gottfried Herder and Johann Christoph Adelung remained influential well into the 19th century. In the history of American linguistics, there were hundreds of Indigenous languages that were never recorded.

  6. Language - Wikipedia

    en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Language

    The more commonly spoken languages dominate the less commonly spoken languages, so the less commonly spoken languages eventually disappear from populations. Of the between 6,000 [5] and 7,000 languages spoken as of 2010, between 50 and 90% of those are expected to have become extinct by the year 2100. [6]

  7. History of English - Wikipedia

    en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_English

    e. English is a West Germanic language that originated from Ingvaeonic languages brought to Britain in the mid-5th to 7th centuries AD by Anglo-Saxon migrants from what is now northwest Germany, southern Denmark and the Netherlands. The Anglo-Saxons settled in the British Isles from the mid-5th century and came to dominate the bulk of southern ...

  8. Spoken language - Wikipedia

    en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spoken_language

    Definition. The term "spoken language" is sometimes used to mean only oral languages, especially by linguists, excluding sign languages and making the terms 'spoken', 'oral', 'vocal language' synonymous. Others refer to sign language as "spoken", especially in contrast to written transcriptions of signs. [1][2][3]

  9. History of the Chinese language - Wikipedia

    en.wikipedia.org/.../History_of_the_Chinese_language

    The earliest historical linguistic evidence of the spoken Chinese language dates back approximately 4500 years, [1] while examples of the writing system that would become written Chinese are attested in a body of inscriptions made on bronze vessels and oracle bones during the Late Shang period (c. 1250 – 1050 BCE), [2] [3] with the very oldest dated to c. 1200 BCE.