The importance of glottogenetic research for comparative linguistics

Svetlana Burlak (Institute of Oriental Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences (Moscow), svetlana.burlak@bk.ru)

Journal of Language Relationship, № 7, 2012 - p.2-9

Abstract: The original aim of historical linguistics was to reconstruct the protolanguage of humanity. Today it is known than the anatomically modern human appeared about 200,000 years ago. While there is no correlation between the Upper Palaeolithic culture and language, anatomy provides evidence that our closest ancestor, Homo heidelbergensis, was able to pronounce several syllables in one utterance and to use phonemic oppositions. Language traits used as arguments in favor of polygenesis might have been borrowed from the communicative systems of other hominid species in contact situations.

Keywords: language origin, speech, glottogenesis, monogenesis.

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