Ursprachen.

1908 T. G. Tucker Introd. Nat. Hist. Lang. ix. 163 The Semitic Ursprache (or common parent).

1922 O. Jespersen Lang. iii. 85 The basis of the whole was not an artificially constructed nebulous ursprache, but the familiar forms and words of an historical language.

1937 Sci. & Society 1 158 The term ‘Indo-European school’ is..applied..to all scholars using the general methods employed in the study of these languages (for instance, the building of Ursprachen on the basis of detailed comparisons in surviving languages).

1950 J. R. Firth Papers in Ling. 1934–51 (1957) xiv. 178 The more romantic theorists who enjoy Indo-European fantasies and from Ursprache go on to speculate on the Urvolk and the Urheimat.

1964 R. H. Robins Gen. Linguistics viii. 319 The ‘starred forms’..give reasons for assuming the existence of an earlier relatively unitary stage of I[ndo]-E[uropean] (or any other family established in this way), the so-called Ursprache, or parent language; but they do not constitute it, or represent word forms in it or any other language. The evidence for the earlier existence of an Ursprache is not the same as bits of the Ursprache itself.

a1975 A. Toynbee Greeks & their Heritage (1981) 122 Greek, Latin and Sanskrit..are all close enough in structure to their common progenitor, the Ursprache, to have retained the Ursprache's principal characteristic.