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Language family

A language family is a group of languages related through descent from a common ancestor, called the proto-language of that family. The term family is a metaphor borrowed from biology, with the tree model used in historical linguistics analogous to a family tree, or to phylogenetic trees of taxa used in evolutionary taxonomy. Linguists thus describe the…

Products, Structure of a family & Genetic relationship

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Structure of a family

MonophyleticCladeGermanic languagesIndo-EuropeanProto-Germanic
21 related topics

Genetic relationship

GeneticsAttestedNorth GermanicDanishSwedish
15 related topics

Other classifications of languages

SprachbundIndian subcontinentItalic languagesLatinOscan
13 related topics

Overview

LanguagesProto-languageTree modelHistorical linguisticsFamily tree
43 related topics

Topics to explore

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Overview

Major language families

Genetic relationship

Structure of a family

Visual representation

Other classifications of languages

Advanced semantic analysis

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Map overview Semantic statistics

Language family

Nodes116
Edges115
Triples95
Avg. degree1.98
Density0.017241
Components1

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Language family

Top relations

related to Establishment · 19
Language family → Ancient Norse, Danish, For, French, Icelandic, In, Indo-European, Italian, Latin, Norse, North Germanic, Norwegian, Old Norse, Portuguese, Proto-Indo-European, Romance, Romanian, Spanish, Swedish
related to Sprachbund · 17
Language family → An, Baltic, But, English, Germanic, However, In, Indian, It, Italic, Latin, Oscan, Shared, Slavic, The, Umbrian, West Germanic
related to Structure of a family · 12
Language family → Germanic, Indo-European, Language, Proto-Germanic, Proto-Indo-European, Some, Subfamilies, The, This, Those, Thus, Within
related to Contact languages · 10
Language family → However, In, It, Language, Languages, Nonetheless, Pidgins, Quite, The, This
related to Visual representation · 10
Language family → Altaic, Critics, Even, For, Historical, Japonic, Koreanic, The, There, While
related to Dialect continua · 9
Language family → Arabic, Classifications, Further, However, Japanese, Japonic, Ryukyuan, Some, Thus
related to Proto-languages · 7
Language family → August Schleicher, For, However, Indo-European, Proto-Indo-European, The, This
related to Genetic relationship · 4
Language family → Languages, The, There, Two
is a · 3
Language family → group of languages related through descent from a common ancestor, monophyletic unit, Romance languages

Important terminology Word statistics

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Important terminology

language languages family related families common genetic ancestor contact example indo-european one many proto-language linguistic tree isolates relationship also model

Entity relationships Subject–Predicate–Object triples

SubjectPredicateObjectConfidenceSrc
Language familyis agroup of languages related through descent from a common ancestor0.90text
Language familyis aRomance languages0.90text
Language familyis amonophyletic unit0.90text
theseinstance ofIn cases0.80text
genetic relationships are established through use of the comparative method of linguistic analysis.In order to test the hypothesis that two languages are relatedinstance ofIn cases0.80text
the comparative method begins with the collection of pairs of words that are hypothesized to be cognatesinstance ofIn cases0.80text
borrowinginstance ofeither of them may influence the other through linguistic interference0.80text
Language familyrelated to Contact languagesThe0.60section
Language familyrelated to Contact languagesHowever0.60section
Language familyrelated to Contact languagesIt0.60section
Language familyrelated to Contact languagesQuite0.60section
Language familyrelated to Contact languagesIn0.60section

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