| Scholars have investigated the possibility that the protolanguage marked these categories through internal inflection in the root and pattern system, affixes, prefixal or suffixal person marking, and so on. |
| Here we have to turn to notions of exaptation, for language is a unique aptitude that doesn't seem to have emerged from protolanguage, and certainly did not do so directly. |
| From a linguistic perspective, any protolanguage would be merely embryonic. |
| Protolanguage is a language that provides a principal tool for studying and revision of the dialects. |
| The linguistic characteristics of South Caucasian languages indicate descent from a common protolanguage. |
| Nominalized verb formations such as verbal nouns, participles, and predicative adjectives probably harken back to the protolanguage and can be reconstructed for predicates expressing state rather than action. |
