Draft:Languages



There are "approximately 3,000–6,000 languages that are spoken by humans today".

Linguistics
Linguistics is the scientific study of human language. Linguistics can be broadly broken into three categories or subfields of study: language form, language meaning, and language in context.

"Although linguistics is the scientific study of language, a number of other intellectual disciplines are relevant to language and intersect with it. Semiotics, for example, is the general study of signs and symbols both within language and without. Literary theorists study the use of language in literature. Linguistics additionally draws on and informs work from such diverse fields as acoustics, anthropology, biology, computer science, human anatomy, informatics, neuroscience, philosophy, psychology, sociology, and speech-language pathology."

Theoretical languages
Def. "[a] form of communication using words either spoken or gestured with the hands and structured with grammar, often with a writing system" is called a language.

"Language may refer either to the specifically human capacity for acquiring and using complex systems of communication, or to a specific instance of such a system of complex communication."

If there is at least one human or hominin language, why are there more than one?

Dominant languages
Def. a "[l]anguage spoken by the dominant social group, or language that is seen as the main language of a country" is called a dominant language.

Language families
Def. "[a] set of languages which have evolved from a common ancestor" is called a language family.

Luwian
Luwiya is the name of the region in which the Luwians lived, as Luwiya is attested, for example, in the Hittite laws.

Several other Anatolian languages – particularly Carian, Lycian, Lydian and Milyan (also known as Lycian B or Lycian II) – are now usually identified as related to Luwian – and as mutually connected more closely than other constituents of the Anatolian branch.

Luwic or Luwian (in the broad sense of the term), is one of three major sub-branches of Anatolian, alongside Hittite and Palaic.

Luwian was among the languages spoken during the 2nd and 1st millennia BC by groups in central and western Anatolia and northern Syria. Beginning in the 14th century BC, Luwian-speakers came to constitute the majority in the Hittite capital Hattusa. It appears that by the time of the collapse of the Hittite Empire ca. 1180 BC, the Hittite king and royal family were fully bilingual in Luwian, and long after the extinction of the Hittite language, Luwian continued to be spoken in the Neo-Hittite states of Syria, such as Milid and Carchemish, as well as in the central Anatolian kingdom of Tabal that flourished in the 8th century BC.

The earliest Indo-Europeans in northwest Anatolia were the horse-riders who came to this region from the north and founded Demircihöyük (Eskisehir Province) in Phrygia c. 3000 BC, were allegedly ancestors of the Luwians who inhabited Troy II, and spread widely in the Anatolian peninsula.

"Türkmen-Karahöyük [is] a large Bronze and Iron Age mounded settlement [see second image down on the right] occupied between about 3,500 and 100 BC."

"A local farmer [...] had found a big stone [in the first image on the right] with strange inscriptions while dredging a nearby irrigation canal the previous winter."

"My colleague Michele Massa and I rushed straight there, and we could see it still sticking out of the water, so we jumped right down into the canal up to our waists wading around."

"Right away it was clear it was ancient, and we recognized the script it was written in: Luwian, the language used in the Bronze and Iron ages in the area."

"The survey team immediately identified a special hieroglyphic marking that symbolised the message came from a king."

"The inscription boasted of defeating Phrygia, the kingdom ruled by King Midas, famous from the mythical story where he developed a golden touch."

The "city covered 300 acres, making it one of the largest in Bronze and Iron Age Turkey."

"We had no idea about this kingdom. In a flash, we had profound new information on the Iron Age Middle East."

"Inside this mound are going to be palaces, monuments, houses. This was a marvelous, incredibly lucky find but it’s just the beginning."

Hypotheses

 * 1) Each of today's languages contains a synonym for dominant group.
 * 2) Ultimately, there is only one hominin language.