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Ch.6 Language

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a set of sounds, combination of sounds, and symbols that are used for communication
the sum total of the knowledge, attitudes, and habitual behavior patterns shared and transmitted by the members of a society; hundreds exist
a country's political and intellectual elite seek to promote as the norm for use in schools, government, the media, and other aspects of public life
local or regional characteristics of a language; has distictive grammer and vocabualary
a geographic boundary within which a particular feature occurs
the ability of two people to understand each other when speaking
a set of contiguous dialects in which the dialect nearest to each other at any place in the chain are most closely related
group of languages with a shared but fairly distant origin
divisions within a language family where the commonalities are more definite and the origin is more recent
slight change in a word across languages within a subfamily or through a language family from the present backward torward its origin
linguistic hypothesis proposing the existence of an ancestral language that is the hearth of the ancient Latin, Greek, and Sanskrit languages which hearth would link modern languages from Scandinavia to North Africa and from North America through parts of Asia to Australia
the tracking of sound shifts and hardening of consonants "backward" toward the original language
language without any native speakers
technique using the vocabulary of an extinct language to re-create the language that proceeded the extinct language
language believed to be the ancestral language not only of Proto-Indo-European, but also of the Kartvelian languages of the southern Caucasus region, the Uralic-Altaic languages, the Dravadian languages of India, and the Afro-Asiatic language family
the opposite of language convergence; a process suggested by German linguist August Schleicher whereby new languages are formed when a language breaks into dialects due to a lack of spatial interaction among speakers of the language and continued isolation eventually causes the division of the language into discrete new languages
the collapsing of two languages into one resulting from the consistent spatial interaction of peoples with different languages
three areas in and near the first agricultural hearth, the Fertile Crescent, gave rise to three language families:Europe's Indo-European languages from Anatolia (present-day Turkey); North Africa and Arabian languages (from the western arc of the Fertile Crescent); and the languages in present-day Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and India (from the eatern arc of the Fertile Crescent)
one major theory of how Proto-Indo-European diffused into Europe which holds that the early speakers of Proto-Indo-European spread westward on horseback, overpowering earlier inhabitants and beginning the diffusion and dfferentiation of Indo-European tongues
hypothesis which holds that the Indo-European languages that arose from Proto-Indo-European were first carried eastward into Southwest Asia, next around the Caspian Sea, and then across the Russian-Ukrainian plains and on into the Balkans
Languages (French, Spanish, Italian, Romanian, and Portuguese) that lie in the areas that were once controlled by the Roman Empire but were not subsequently overwhelmed
Languages (English, German, Danish, Norwegian, and Swedish) that reflect the expansion of peoples out of Northern Europe to the west and south
Languages (Russian, Polish, Czech, Slovak, Ukrainian, Slovenian, Serbo-Croation, and Bulgarian) that developed as Slavic people migrated from a base in present-day Ukraine close to 2000 years ago
applying to a tongue spoken in ancient Mediterranean ports that consisted of a mixture of Italian, French, Greek, Spanish, and even some Arabic
when parts of two languages are combined in a simplified structure and vocabulary
a language that began as a pidgin language but was later adopted as the mother tongue by a people in place of the mother tongue
countries in which only one language is spoken
countries in which more than one language is spoken
in multilingual countries the language selected, often by the educated and politcally powerful elite, to promote internal cohesion; usually the language of the courts and government
the language used most commonly around the world; defined on the basis of either the number of speakers of the language, or prevalence of use in commerce and trade
the fourth theme of geography; uniqueness of a location
place name

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