Mother Tongue (journal)
Encyclopedia
Mother Tongue is the yearly periodical of the Association for the Study of Language In Prehistory and was established in 1995. Its goal is to encourage international and interdisciplinary information sharing, discussion, and debate among geneticists
, paleoanthropologists
, archaeologists
, and historical linguists
on questions relating to the emerging synthesis on language origins
and ancestral human spoken languages
. This includes, but is not limited to, discussion of linguistic macrofamily hypotheses
.
Human evolutionary genetics
Human evolutionary genetics studies how one human genome differs from the other, the evolutionary past that gave rise to it, and its current effects. Differences between genomes have anthropological, medical and forensic implications and applications...
, paleoanthropologists
Paleoanthropology
Paleoanthropology, which combines the disciplines of paleontology and physical anthropology, is the study of ancient humans as found in fossil hominid evidence such as petrifacted bones and footprints.-19th century:...
, archaeologists
Archaeology
Archaeology, or archeology , is the study of human society, primarily through the recovery and analysis of the material culture and environmental data that they have left behind, which includes artifacts, architecture, biofacts and cultural landscapes...
, and historical linguists
Historical linguistics
Historical linguistics is the study of language change. It has five main concerns:* to describe and account for observed changes in particular languages...
on questions relating to the emerging synthesis on language origins
Origin of language
The origin of language is the emergence of language in the human species. This is a highly controversial topic. Empirical evidence is so limited that many regard it as unsuitable for serious scholars. In 1866, the Linguistic Society of Paris went so far as to ban debates on the subject...
and ancestral human spoken languages
Proto-language
A proto-language in the tree model of historical linguistics is the common ancestor of the languages that form a language family. Occasionally, the German term Ursprache is used instead.Often the proto-language is not known directly...
. This includes, but is not limited to, discussion of linguistic macrofamily hypotheses
Hypothesis
A hypothesis is a proposed explanation for a phenomenon. The term derives from the Greek, ὑποτιθέναι – hypotithenai meaning "to put under" or "to suppose". For a hypothesis to be put forward as a scientific hypothesis, the scientific method requires that one can test it...
.