Question 1: However, it is possible to recover many features of a proto-language by applying the comparative method—a reconstructive procedure worked out by 19th century linguist ________.
Question 2: Those that have no known relatives (or for which family relationships are only tentatively proposed) are called ________, which can be thought of as minimal language families.
Question 4: It has been asserted, for example, that many of the more striking features shared by ________ (Latin, Oscan, Umbrian, etc.) might well be "areal features".
Question 5: These features are believed to be innovations that took place in ________, a descendant of Proto-Indo-European that was the source of all Germanic languages.
Question 6: By contrast, so far as is known, the ________ is an absolute isolate: it has not been shown to be related to any other language despite numerous attempts, though it has been influenced by neighboring Romance languages.
Question 8: For example, what makes ________ "Germanic" is that they share vocabulary and grammatical features which are not believed to have been present in Proto-Indo-European.
Question 9: (In this way, the term family is analogous to the biological term ________.) Some taxonomists restrict the term family to a certain level, but there is little consensus in how to do so.
Question 10: The concept of language families is based on the historical observation that languages develop ________, which over time may diverge into distinct languages.
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