In this paper I have shown examples of both stable complexity which has been conserved since the
proto-language, and innovative complexity which has developed in a relatively short time.
The stems of Estonian have been divided into inherited stems (from some
proto-language) and loan stems.
Researchers from UC Berkeley and the University of British Columbia built a computer program that can rapidly reconstruct "
proto-languages" - the linguistic ancestors from which all modern languages have evolved.
All of this points in the direction of a 12-vowel system in the
proto-language, as shown in Table 11.
The determination of language families give us the material to reconstruct the
proto-language of a people and discover regular sound correspondences (Hock 1988; Crawley 1992; Bynon 1978; Lord 1966; Robins 1974).
Its practitioners assumed that languages featuring comparable forms of many essential words -- which differ slightly because of systematic rules for changing speech sounds in various languages -- descended from a common
proto-language. (In much the same vein, Darwin argued shortly thereafter that shared anatomical traits of modern animal species derived from a common biological ancestor.)
The paper also slightly revises the shape of Proto-Kenyah, by hypothesizing a very conservative
proto-language. Evidence from Lowland Kenyah languages suggest that PKEN had not deleted *h in final position, nor had it lowered high vowels before word final *h.
This is an unfortunate decision, since the chapters themselves refer to certain historical changes and developments from the
proto-language; the Canaanite shift, for example, is a common reference.
One is that is assumes that language splits are sudden and that, after the split of a
proto-language, there is no subsequent contact between related languages.
The procedure has actually reviewed and re-analysed all the data that were used to reconstruct the
proto-language on the Finnic (Uralic) side.
Although linguistic classification methodology necessarily posits a single
proto-language for Iban, does the Iban language lack a single source just as Iban DNA does?
(42) Therefore it seems reasonable to speculate that in Proto-Indo-European a local case could be construed with a postposed adverbial element and the proposed reconstruction * men-[eh.sub.2] * ([h.sub.1]) endo [h.sub.2] does not deviate from our expectations about syntactic structures in the
proto-language.