ENGLISH OLD GERMAN
LATIN
GREEK
SANSKRIT
JAPANESE
ONE
TWO
THREE
FOUR
FIVE
SIX
SEVEN
EIGHT
NINE
TEN
AINS
TWAI
THRIJA
FIDWOR
FIMF
SAIHS
SIBUM
AHTAU
NIUN
TAIHUM
UNUS
DUO
TRES
QUATTOUR
QUINQUE
SEX
SEPTEM
OCTO
NOVEM
DECEM
HEIS
DUO
TREIS
TETTARES
PENTE
HEKS
HEPTA
OKTO
ENNEA
DEKA
EKAS
DVA
TRYAS
CATVARAS
PANCA
SAT
SAPTA
ASTA
NAVA
DASA
HITOTSU
FUTATSU
MITTSU
YOTTSU
ITSUTSU
MUTTSU
NANATSU
YATTSU
KOKONOTSU
TO
FIGURE 1 Words for numbers from one to ten show the relations among Indo-
European languages and the anomalous character of Japanese, which is not part of
that family. Such similarities stimulated interest in the origins of Indo-European
languages.
IELTS
JOURNAL
164
The Romance languages served as the first model for answering the question.Even to
someone with no knowledge of Latin, the profound similarities among Romance
languages would have made it natural to suggest that they were derived from a
common ancestor.On the assumption that the shared characteristice of these
languages came from the common progenitor (whereas the divergences arose later.as
the languages diverged),it would have been possible to reconstruct many of the
characteristics of the original proto-language. In much the same way it became clear
that the branches of the Indo-European family could be studied and a hypothetical
family tree constructed,reading back to a common ancestor:proto-Indo-European.
This is the tree approach. The basic process represented by the tree model is one of
divergence:when languages become isolated from one other,they differ
increasingly,and dialects gradually differentiate until they become separate languages.
Divergence is by no means the only possible tendency in language evolution.Johannes
Schmidt,introduced a "wave" model in which linguistic changes spared like
waves,leading ultimately to convergence;that is, growing similarity among languages
that were initially quite different.
Today, however, most linguists think primarily in terms of linguistic family trees. It is
necessary to construct some explicit models of how language change might occur
according to a process-based view. There are four main classes of models.
The first is the process of initial colonization, by which an uninhabited territory
becomes populated; its language naturally becomes that of the colonizers. Second are
processes of divergence, such as the linguistic divergence arising form separation or
isolation mentioned above in relation to early models of the Indo-European
languages.The third group of models is based on processes of linguistic
convergence.The wave model, formulated by Schmidt in the 1870's, is an example, but
convergence methods have not generally found favour among linguists.
Now,the slow and rather static operation of these processes is complicated by another
factor: linguistic replacement. That factor provides the basis for a fourth class of
models. In many areas of the world the languages initially spoken by the indigenous
people have come to be replaced, fully or partially, by languages spoken by people
coming from outside. Were it not for this large complicating factor, the world's
linguistic history could be faithfully described by the initial distribution of Homo
Sapiens, followed by the gradual, ling-term workings of divergence and
convergence.So linguistic replacement also has a key role to play in explaining the
origins of the Indo-European languages.
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