Changes

Other comments:

Other comments:

<blockquote>Some modern linguists now trace a number of language families to languages believed to be reconstructed at the time of the earliest known human civilizations or possibly before.</blockquote>

<blockquote>Some modern linguists now trace a number of language families to languages believed to be reconstructed at the time of the earliest known human civilizations or possibly before.</blockquote>

This sentence gives me the following impressions. First, "some" implies comparatively few modern linguistics accept this when in fact I doubt you could find a book on historical linguistics that doesn't accept the genetic model. Second, "or possibly before" is unnecessarily qualified. Proto-Afro-Asiatic could not have been spoken concurrently with its daughter languages. So at least one reconstructed language necessarily precedes the first great civilizations, as most archeologists divine them. The new phrasing allows reads as if linguists were doing the reconstruction "at the time of the earliest known human civilizations".

This sentence gives me the following impressions. First, "some" implies comparatively few modern linguistics accept this when in fact I doubt you could find a book on historical linguistics that doesn't accept the genetic model. Second, "or possibly before" is unnecessarily qualified. Proto-Afro-Asiatic could not have been spoken concurrently with its daughter languages. So at least one reconstructed language necessarily precedes the first great civilizations, as most archeologists/historians define them. The new phrasing allows reads as if linguists were doing the reconstruction "at the time of the earliest known human civilizations".

<blockquote>Linguists today are aware it is difficult to reconstruct the mother language for which there is no direct evidence</blockquote>

<blockquote>Linguists today are aware it is difficult to reconstruct the mother language for which there is no direct evidence</blockquote>

While this is true to some degree, it completely changes the meaning from the way it was written before. I meant to state that reconstructing a mother language from reconstructed daughter languages is difficult. That's where the controversy lies, when a linguist makes that leap of faith in the data.

While this is true to some degree, it completely changes the meaning from the way it was written before. I meant to state that reconstructing a mother language from reconstructed daughter languages is difficult. That's where the controversy lies, when a linguist makes that leap of faith in the data.