All terms in this list:

Indo-European: Spoken in Europe, N. India, Iran, Afghanistan, N&S America, and Australia. 100 Languages, 1.7 billion Native Speakers.

Complete Agreement: Choose the sound found in all daughter languages.

Voicing Assimilation: -vd (voiced) Cs become +vd between Vs

Final Devoicing: +vd Cs become -vd at the end of words

Fricitivization: stops become fricatives between vowels.

a stop -- a fricative (esp. /h/), esp. between Vs, (and /h/ -- θ)

Indo-European *[trei] -- English [θri] "three"

consonant weakening: other fricatives become [h]; degemmination rattus-rats

Consonant deletion CCR: [h] deletes between Vs; clusters are simplified.

Old English [knixt] -- Mod. English [naIt] "knight"

Syncope: unstressed Vs are deleted.

Loss of vowel, esp. unstressed.

Middle English [stanəs] -- Modern English [stonz] "stones"

epenthesis: Vs are inserted (esp. to break up C clusters)

addition of either a V or C.

Old English [ganra] -- Middle English [gandra] "gander"

analogy: morphemes become regularized. Old English plural of cows was kine.

morphemes: In linguistics, a morpheme is the smallest semantic unit in a language. The field of study dedicated to morphemes is called morphology. A morpheme is not identical to a word, and the principal difference between the two is that a morpheme may or may not s

paradigm leveling: whole set of inflected forms become more similar. e.g. English lost many verbal inflections until now there is only 1 (present tense) in the 3rd person singular. {-s}

Assimilation: (a sound becomes more like another in terms of 1 or 2 features)

Latin [0kto] -- Italian [otto] "eight"

Old Spanish [semda] -- Modern Spanish [senda] "path"

dissimilation: (a sound becomes less like another in the terms of 1 or 2 features)

Latin [anma] -- Spanish [alma] "soul"

A phenomenon whereby similar consonant or vowel sounds in a word become less similar, resulting in a form that is easier for the li

vowel reduction: a full vowel becomes a reduced vowel, like /ə/, esp. between vowels.

Old English [stanas] -- Middle English [stanəs] "stones"

degemination: a double consonant becomes a single consonant.

Latin [rattus] -- Spanish [rata] "rat"

metathesis: 2 sounds change places; sometimes next to each other, sometimes not.

Old English [waeps] -- Middle English [waesp] "wasp"

Latin [miraculum] -- Spanish [milagro] "miracle"

Cultural Reasons: Social Status/group identity reasons: prestige, covert prestige
Language contact reasons: borrowed vocabulary
Yiddish: schlepp, schmuck

Great Vowel Shift: long Vs shifted up, and high Vs become diphthongs.

[hu:s] -- [haUs]
[na:m] -- [ne:m]
[spo:n] -- [spu:n]

Caucasian: Southwest Russia to northeast turkey, Caucasus Mountains

# of Ls 35 (3 families?)

5 million native speakers

Altaic: Turkey across Central Asia to China, also Japan and Korea

# of Ls 13

285 million Native Speakers

Uralic: N. Europe & Siberia, Hungary

# of Ls 20

22 Million

Dravidian: Southern India
# of Ls 23
150 million

Austro-Asiatic: SE Asia, central India, parts of Malaysia

# of Ls 150

80 Million Native Speakers

Sino-Tibetan: NE India, China, Nepal, Burma, Tibet

#of Ls 300

1+ billion Native Speakers

Austro-Tai (Austronesian): Madagascar to New Zealand, Philippines, Thailand, Laos, Malaysia, Tahiti, Hawaii, Indonesia, Vietnam, Cambodia,

# of Ls 900+180 million native speakers

Papuan (Indo-Pacific): New Guinea & Nearby Islands

# of Ls 700

3 million native speakers

Australian: Australia (aboriginal)

# of Ls 170

30,000 Native Speakers

Afro-Asiatic: N & W Africa, Middle East

# of Ls 250

175 million Native Speakers

Niger-Kordofanian: (Niger-Congo) Sub-Saharan Africa

# of Ls 900

175 million native speakers

Nilo-Saharan: Saharan Africa

# of Ls 120

30 million N.S.

Khoisan: Far southern Africa

# of Ls 30

120 thousand N. S.

Basque: Language Isolate (orphan)

North America: 12 Families

500.000 N. S.

Mexico & Central America: 5 families

2 million n. s.

South America: 3 families

11 million n. s.