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The early daughter languages, and even the proto-language itself, may be attested in surviving texts. For example, Latin is the proto-language of the Romance language family, which includes such modern languages as French, Italian, Portuguese, Romanian, Catalan and Spanish.
Within an attested language, particular word forms directly known to have been used (because they appear in the literature, inscriptions or documented speech) are called attested forms. They contrast with unattested forms , which are reconstructions hypothesised to have been used based on indirect evidence (such as etymological patterns).
Below is a partial list of proto-languages that have been reconstructed, ordered by geographic location. Africa. Proto-Afroasiatic. Proto-Semitic; Proto-Cushitic;
Ugaritic is the earliest Northwest Semitic language to be unambiguously attested within its native context, c. 1300 BC. c. 2250 BC: Elamite: Awan dynasty peace treaty with Naram-Sin [17] [18] The Proto-Elamite script attested from c. 3100 BC remains undeciphered; the
Proto-East-Cushitic is the reconstructed proto-language common ancestor of the Eastern branch of the Cushitic language family.Its words and roots are not directly attested in any written works, but have been reconstructed through the comparative method, which finds systematic regularities between languages not explained by coincidence or word-borrowing, and extrapolates ancient forms from ...
A proto-language is the reconstructed or historically-attested parent language of a group of languages that are genetically related. Depending on the age of the language family under consideration, its homeland may be known with near-certainty (in the case of historical or near-historical migrations) or it may be very uncertain (in the case of ...
In reconstructing the history of the Indo-European languages and the form of the Proto-Indo-European language, some languages have been of particular importance. These generally include the ancient Indo-European languages that are both well-attested and documented at an early date, although some languages from later periods are important if ...
An attested word from which a root in the proto-language is reconstructed is a reflex. More generally, a reflex is the known derivative of an earlier form, which may be either attested or reconstructed. A reflex that is predictable from the reconstructed history of the language is a 'regular' reflex. Reflexes of the same source are cognates.