proto-language
Noun
Meaning
(linguistics) A language which is reconstructed by examining similarities in existing languages to try to deduce what a common ancestor language, no longer known, would have been like.
(linguistics) The early utterances produced by an infant before it acquires true language.
Source: en.wiktionary.orgSynonyms
Examples
A false proto-language over the area may be reconstructed for them or may be taken to be a third language serving as a source of diffused features.
Eric P. Hamp (1976, 91) supports the Graeco-Armenian thesis, anticipating even a time "when we should speak of Helleno-Armenian" (meaning the postulate of a Graeco-Armenian proto-language).
In a similar vein, there are many similar unique innovations in Germanic, Baltic and Slavic that are far more likely to be areal features than traceable to a common proto-language.
Gamkrelidze, Ivanov: Indo-European and the Indo-Europeans: A reconstruction and historical analysis of a proto-language and a proto-culture (vols.
This idea is fundamental to the modern comparative method, since the method necessarily assumes regular correspondences between sounds in related languages, and consequently regular sound changes from the proto-language.
Genealogically related languages present shared retentions, that is, features of the proto-language (or reflexes of such features) that cannot be explained by chance or borrowing ( convergence ).