{
  "author": "ChronologiaOS editorial guides",
  "date": "2026-10-09",
  "department": "Writing & Languages",
  "department_id": "WRITING",
  "epistemic_label": "Source guide",
  "epistemic_status": "SOURCE_GUIDE",
  "period": "Hypotheses about deep prehistory",
  "place": "Global",
  "public_sources": [
    {
      "publisher": "Cambridge University Press",
      "title": "Lyle Campbell and William J. Poser, Language Classification: History and Method, Cambridge University Press, 2008.",
      "type": "Reference book",
      "url": "https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511486906"
    }
  ],
  "publication_state": "PUBLIC",
  "read_time": "3 min read",
  "sections": [
    {
      "body": "Campbell and Poser's Language Classification: History and Method reviews how language relationships have been established and evaluates controversial proposals of distant relationship, including Nostratic and Proto-World. The research record keeps those macrofamily hypotheses outside its canonical ancestry paths.",
      "heading": "Start with the method's limits",
      "source": 0
    },
    {
      "body": "The record stores Nostratic above Proto-Indo-European at confidence 0.2, Borean above Nostratic at 0.1, and Proto-World at 0.05. Each is labelled a speculative hypothesis. The numbers express how much the comparative method can support at that depth, not a vote against the idea.",
      "heading": "Confidence that falls with depth"
    },
    {
      "body": "Ask what a proposed deep relationship rests on: regular sound correspondences and shared irregular morphology, or lists of look-alike words. The second can be produced by chance, borrowing, or sound symbolism.",
      "heading": "Try the research habit"
    },
    {
      "body": "Why does the record allow speculative macrofamilies to be retrieved only when a query explicitly asks for hypotheses? Think about what happens to a timeline if they are mixed in by default.",
      "heading": "A question to carry forward"
    }
  ],
  "short_title": "Is there a mother of all languages?",
  "slug": "how-far-back-can-language-comparison-reach",
  "summary": "Nostratic, Borean, and Proto-World propose ancestors far deeper than Indo-European. Learn why the research record stores them as hypotheses with falling confidence rather than as ancestry.",
  "tags": [
    "Nostratic",
    "Proto-World",
    "Macrofamilies",
    "Comparative method",
    "Hypotheses"
  ],
  "title": "How far back can language comparison reach?"
}