The comparative method has enabled us to trace distant phylogenetic relationships among languages and reconstruct extinct languages from the past. Nonetheless, it has limitations, mostly resulting from the circumstance that languages also change by contact with unrelated languages and in response to external factors, particularly, aspects of human cognition and features of our physical and cultural environments. In this paper, it is argued that the limitations of historical linguistics can be partially alleviated by the consideration of the links between language structure and the biological underpinnings of human language, human cognition, and human behaviour, and specifically, of human self-domestication (that is, the existence in humans of features of domesticated mammals). Overall, we can expect that the languages spoken in remote prehistory exhibited most of the features of the so-called esoteric languages, which are used by present-day, close-knit, small human communities that share a great deal of knowledge about their environment.

比较方法使我们能够追踪语言之间的遥远的系统发育关系，并重建过去的绝种语言。尽管如此，它还是有局限性的，这主要是由于语言也会因与不相关的语言接触并响应外部因素（尤其是人类认知方面以及我们的自然和文化环境特征）而发生变化。本文认为，通过考虑语言结构与人类语言，人类认知和人类行为的生物学基础（特别是人类自我驯化）之间的联系，可以部分缓解历史语言学的局限性（也就是说，人类存在驯化哺乳动物的特征）。全面的，