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A proto-language in the tree model of historical linguistics is a language – usually hypothetical or reconstructed, and unattested – from which a number of attested, or documented, known languages are believed to have descended by evolution, or slow modification of the proto-language into languages that form a language family. In the strict sense, a proto-language is the ''latest'' common ancestor of a language family (immediately before the start of the divergence into the attested idioms) and thus corresponds to the most recent common ancestor in biology, although the term is often used more loosely. Moreover, a group of idioms (such as a dialect cluster) which are not considered separate languages (for whichever reasons) can also be described as descending from a unitary proto-language. Occasionally, the German term ''Ursprache'' (from ''Ur-'' "primordial" and ''Sprache'' "language", ) is used instead. ==Definition and verification== Typically, the proto-language is not known directly. It is by definition a linguistic reconstruction formulated by applying the comparative method to a group of languages featuring similar characteristics. The tree is a statement of similarity and a hypothesis that the similarity results from descent from a common language. The comparative method, a process of deduction, begins from a set of characteristics, or characters, found in the attested languages. If the entire set can be accounted for by descent from the proto-language, which must contain the proto-forms of them all, the tree, or phylogeny, is regarded as a complete explanation and by Occam's razor, is given credibility. More recently such a tree has been termed "perfect" and the characters labeled "compatible." No trees but the smallest branches are ever found to be perfect. Typically credibility is given to the hypotheses of highest compatibility. The differences in compatibility must be explained by various applications of the wave model. The level of completeness of the reconstruction achieved varies, depending on how complete the evidence is from the descendant languages and on the formulation of the characters by the linguists working on it. Not all characters are suitable for the comparative method. For example, lexical items that are loans from a different language do not reflect the phylogeny to be tested, and if used will detract from the compatibility. Getting the right dataset for the comparative method is a major task in historical linguistics. Some universally accepted proto-languages are Proto-Indo-European, Proto-Uralic, and Proto-Dravidian. In a few fortuitous instances, which have been used to verify the method and the model (and probably ultimately inspired it), a literary history exists from as early as a few millennia ago, allowing the descent to be traced in detail. The early daughter languages, and even the proto-language itself, may be attested in surviving texts. For example, Latin is the proto-language of the Romance language family, which includes such modern languages as French, Italian, Portuguese, Romanian, Catalan and Spanish. Likewise, Proto-Norse, the ancestor of the modern Scandinavian languages, is attested, albeit in fragmentary form, in the Elder Futhark. Although there are no very early Indo-Aryan inscriptions, the Indo-Aryan languages of modern India all go back to Vedic Sanskrit (or dialects very closely related to it), which has been preserved in texts accurately handed down by parallel oral and written traditions for many centuries. The first person to offer systematic reconstructions of an unattested proto-language was August Schleicher; he did so for Proto-Indo-European in 1861.〔.〕 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Proto-language」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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