‘HUMAN’: LINGUISTIC STUDIES IN THE EMERGENCE AND ORAL COMMUNICATION OF A CONCEPT. RECONSTRUCTED ROOTS OF THE PREHISTORIC LANGUAGE CONTACT SITUATION AND CONTINUITY AS REFLEXES IN HISTORICAL LANGUAGES ACROSS LANGUAGE FAMILIES

Abstract

For the Indo-European languages Pokorny’s etymon 700, manu-s and mon-us , comprises as meanings ‘man’ and ‘human being’. In the following article we will show that this etymon is not only the root for a variety of words in the Indo-European languages, but also has equivalent root forms in other language families, among them reconstructed roots in the Semitic, Uralic, Dravidian, Afroasiatic, Caucasian, and Sino-Tibetan language family. In these languages the above mentioned meaning attached to the words that derived from these roots is relatively stable besides some special meanings. After the description of the reflexes of the obviously widely spread root for the concept ‘man’ and ‘human’ in natural languages we will raise the discussion about the evidence for historical transcontinental language contact situations that distributed the linguistic material of this concept, when looking at the material. Finally, we present based on our findings an approach for the understanding of historical language contacts, their contents, and the development of varieties of languages based on concepts.