Linguistic monogenesis and polygenesis

In historical or evolutionary linguistics, monogenesis and polygenesis are two different hypotheses about the phylogenetic origin of human languages.

[7] Some proponents of monogenesis are Alfredo Trombetti, Joseph Greenberg, Harold C. Fleming,[8] Merritt Ruhlen and John Bengtson.

The first serious scientific attempt to establish the reality of monogenesis was that of Alfredo Trombetti, in his book L'unità d'origine del linguaggio, published in 1905.

[12][13] In the second half of the 20th century, Joseph Greenberg produced a series of controversial large-scale classifications of the world's languages.

[21] Some proponents of polygenesis are David A. Freedman, William Shi-Yuan Wang, Cristophe Coupé, and Jean-Marie Hombert.

Their ideas of linguistic polygenesis were linked with polygenism: it stated that several language families arose independently from speechless Urmenschen (German: proto-humans).