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This works consists of the general part and the special part. The general part of the work has evolved from the Fritz Thyssen Stiftung funded language-tree-theory focused research project „Stammbaumtheorie” (1999-2000). The general part of the work is structured as follows: mythological trees, earlier tree models, the first contemporary language trees, Schleicher and Darwinist turn in linguistics, the language trees theory and its basic concepts, Finno-Ugric language trees, genetic trees and alternative models (wave theory, rhizomatics, perturbation etc.). In the special part of the work, the language tree theory is associated with certain important and mind boggling semantic fields like the colour names and words denominating the human being and the kinship relations. The semantic fields are the responsibility of post-graduate students, within the project. Subjected to scrutiny are the languages belonging to different language families (language trees) from the Baltics to the Balkan area, e.g. Estonian, Finnish, Latvian, Russian, Ukrainian, Czech, Bulgarian, Italian, Hungarian and German, and the Estonian Sign Language. The researchers go on a quest to know whether the semantic fields under study and their formation and structure are to language tree theory or alternative contact theories, whether those fields are area specific, universal or language tree i.e. language family specific. |