Possession (linguistics)In linguistics, possession is an asymmetric relationship between two constituents, the referent of one of which (the possessor) in some sense possesses (owns, has as a part, rules over, etc.) the referent of the other (the possessed). Possession may be marked in many ways, such as simple juxtaposition of nouns, possessive case, possessed case, construct state (as in Arabic, and Nêlêmwa), or adpositions (possessive suffixes, possessive adjectives). For example, English uses a possessive clitic, 's; a preposition, of; and adjectives, my, your, his, her, etc.
Eurasiatic languagesEurasiatic is a proposed language macrofamily that would include many language families historically spoken in northern, western, and southern Eurasia. The idea of a Eurasiatic superfamily dates back more than 100 years. Joseph Greenberg's proposal, dating to the 1990s, is the most widely discussed version. In 2013, Mark Pagel and three colleagues published what they believe to be statistical evidence for a Eurasiatic language family.
Livonian languageThe Livonian language (līvõ kēļ or rāndakēļ) is a Finnic language whose native land is the Livonian Coast of the Gulf of Livonia, located in the north of the Kurzeme peninsula in Latvia. Although initially its last native speaker died in 2013, a child born in 2020 is reported to be a native speaker of Livonian. Her parents are Livonian language revival activists Jānis Mednis and Renāte Medne. Also, there are about 40 reported L2 speakers and 210 having reported some knowledge of the language.
Father Tongue hypothesisThe Father Tongue hypothesis proposes that humans tend to speak their father's language. It is based on a 1997 proposal that linguistic affiliation correlates more closely with Y-chromosomal variation than with mitochondrial DNA variation. The initial work was performed on African and European samples by a team of population geneticists led by Laurent Excoffier. On the basis of these and similar findings by other geneticists, the hypothesis was elaborated by historical linguist George van Driem in 2010 that the teaching by a mother of her spouse's tongue to her children is a mechanism by which language has preferentially been spread over time.
Yeniseian languagesThe Yeniseian languages (sometimes known as Yeniseic or Yenisei-Ostyak; occasionally spelled with -ss-) are a family of languages that are spoken by the Yeniseian people in the Yenisei River region of central Siberia. As part of the proposed Dené–Yeniseian language family, the Yeniseian languages have been argued to be part of "the first demonstration of a genealogical link between Old World and New World language families that meets the standards of traditional comparative-historical linguistics".
Borean languagesBorean (also Boreal or Boralean) is a hypothetical linguistic macrofamily that encompasses almost all language families worldwide except those native to the Americas, Africa, Oceania, and the Andaman Islands. Its supporters propose that the various languages spoken in Eurasia and adjacent regions have a genealogical relationship, and ultimately descend from languages spoken during the Upper Paleolithic in the millennia following the Last Glacial Maximum. The name Borean is based on the Greek βορέας, and means "northern".
