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The family tree of language: Do you know how different languages evolve?
The concept of language family is based on the historical origin relationship between various languages. Language families are made up of multiple languages that all evolved from a common ancestor language. The term is used much like the concept of "family" in biology, and the linguist's tree model is similar to the phylogenetic tree in evolutionary taxonomy. Linguists therefore view "daughter languages" in language families as genetically related. The process of deriving a daughter language from an original language is usually due to geographical separation. Dialects in different regions undergo different linguistic changes over time and eventually become unique languages.
For example, the well-known Romance language family includes Spanish, French, Italian, and Portuguese, all of which are descended from Vulgar Latin.
Evil means that the Romance language family itself belongs to the larger Indo-European language family, which includes many languages from Europe and South Asia, all of which are believed to have descended from a common ancestor called Proto-Indo-European. Language families generally contain at least two languages, and even language isolates—that is, languages that are not related to any other languages—are sometimes called families that contain only one language. In contrast, there is no upper limit to the number of languages a language family can contain; for example, the Austronesian languages include over a thousand.
Many languages have common characteristics that can be used to identify members of a language family.
Speech changes are strong evidence for identifying genetic relationships because they have predictable and consistent properties that can be used to reconstruct the original language through comparative methods. However, contact between languages can also cause language changes that mislead scholars into thinking they are genetically related. For example, there are many similarities between Mongolian, Tungusic, and Turkic languages, leading some scholars to believe they are related. But it was later discovered that these similarities were due to language contact, so they were not really related. Even the oldest provable language family, the Afro-Asiatic language family, is essentially much younger than the languages themselves.
Major language families
Estimates of the number of language families in the world vary widely. According to "Ethnologue", there are currently 7,151 human languages, which are distributed in 142 different language families. Lyle Campbell (2019) identified 406 independent language families, including isolates. According to "Ethnologue 27" (2024), the following language families contain at least 1% of all known languages:
- Niger-Congo (1552 languages)
- Ostronesia (1256 languages)
- New Guinea (481 languages)
- Sino-Tibetan language family (458 languages)
- Indo-European languages (454 languages)
According to Glottolog 5.0 (2024), the following is a list of large language families, totaling 7788 languages (excluding sign languages, mixed languages, and languages that are difficult to classify):
- Atlantic-Congo (1410 languages)
- Ostronesia (1274 languages)
- Indo-European languages (586 languages)
- Sino-Tibetan language family (514 languages)
- African-Asiatic languages (381 languages)
Language counts may vary significantly depending on language usage.
In language families, the establishment of genetic relationships depends on the process of language change. If two languages are members of the same language family, it must be because they are derived from the same common ancestral language. The establishment of this concept is evident in the historical records of certain languages, such as the Romance languages, whose members are all derived from Latin. Although the genetic relationship of some languages has not been directly demonstrated in the record; for example, the Romance and North Germanic languages are related to each other and are both subfamilies of Indo-European, evidence for Proto-Indo-European is not preserved.
Language contact and lending
Contact between languages can result in languages influencing each other, whether through borrowing or other means. For example, the influence of French on English, the influence of Arabic on Persian, etc. This form of influence is not equivalent to a genetic relationship between languages.
Although language contact can lead to mutual influence between languages, this does not constitute a sign of genetic relationships.
Facing the diversity and complexity of languages, the structure of language families is not absolute. Especially under the influence of certain special factors, some languages are independent of the classification of other languages, forming language isolation. According to statistics from Glottolog, there are a total of 423 language families in the world today, of which 184 are language isolates. Basque, for example, is an isolate language.
When discussing the evolution and contact of languages, should we understand more deeply the roots of language’s existence?
