Classification Of Langs

Front 1

# of langs in world

Back 1

almost 7,000 diff langs

Front 2

Language v Dialect

Back 2

Test of mutual intelligibility
- MI varieties can be understood by speakers of each variety
-London English, Florida English
- vs Italian of Florence, French of Paris
- PROBLEM - dividing continuum of MI dialects whose endpoints not MI
- border Dutch/German MI
- Amsterdam/Munich not
- Palestinian/Syrian Arabic MI
- Morrocan/Saudi Arabian not

Front 3

political, cultural, social, historical, religious interference in lang boundaries

Back 3

-Serbian+Croatian = dialects of Serbo-Croatian
- dif histories, cultures, religions, alphabets
- Chinese = many languages
- 5:Mandarin, Cantonese, Taiwanese, Wu, Yue

Front 4

Threat to Linguistic diversity

Back 4

- most langs have fewer than 10,000 speakers
- language death (vs evolution of lang) is increasingly common
- Manx - Celtic lang, Island of Man btwn Ireland and Great Brit - last speaker died in 1970s
- 60% of langs at risk

Front 5

Why lang death is bad

Back 5

1 - lost opportunity to study how language works - Ubykh - 81C 3V
2 - loss of cultural knowledge encoded in lang

Front 6

Why langs die

Back 6

1 - speakers die bc of war or disease
2 - more common - speakers favor use of lang of greater economic or educational opportunities
- engl.,spanish, fr, internat'l
- thai, bahasa indonesia, swahili, Filipino, local threats

Front 7

Classic pattern of lang loss

Back 7

3 generation
parents: L1
children: bilingual (dominant+heritage L)
grandkids: dominant lang

Front 8

Types of Classification (2)

Back 8

1) Genetic
2) Typological

Front 9

Genetic

Back 9

langs categorized according to descent
- developed historically from same ancestor lan
- often share structural chars, but not necessarily (eng+latvian morphology)
- unrelated langs may have simil's - SVO in English, Thai, Swahili

Front 10

Linguistic Typology

Back 10

classifies langs according to structural chars
-also aim to find universals

Front 11

Absolute universals

Back 11

structural patterns and traits that occur in all langs

Front 12

Universal tendencies

Back 12

structural patterns and traits that occur in most langs

Front 13

Implicational universals

Back 13

typological generalizations which specify that presence of one trait implies presence of another (not vice versa)

Front 14

Markedness theory

Back 14

marked traits = more complex and/or universally rarer than unmarked traits
- marked trait usually found only in unmarked counterpart also occurs

Front 15

Phonology universals + tendencies (Vowels)

Back 15

Langs classified by size and pattern of vowel systems
1) size
- 1/2 all langs: 5 V (2high, 2mid, 1 low) + back Vs rounded
- majority of other langs: 3,4,6,7,8,9
- rare: fewer than 3 or more than 9

Front 16

Phonological tendencies (vowels) 3

Back 16

1) most common phoneme /a/ (almost all langs). /i/+/u/ almost as common.
2)Front Vs gen'l unrounded. Nonlow back Vs gen'l rounded
3)Low V's gen'l unrounded

English - 11 phonemes - above-average number, yet conforms to all other tendencies

Front 17

Phonological Implicational Universals (Vs) 2

Back 17

1) contrastive nasal Vs implies contrastive oral Vs
- oral V>nasal V
2) if lang have contrasting long Vs, also have contrasting short Vs

Front 18

Phonological universals + tendencies (Cs) 4

Back 18

- size varies widely
1) All langs have stops
2) most common stops: ptk.
- few langs lack any 1
- no langs lack all 3
- most common: t
- least common: p
2) most common fric: s
-if only 1 fric, s likely
- next most common: f
3) vast majority of langs: at least 1 nasal phoneme
-only 1 nasal: usually n
- if 2: normally n,m
4) Most langs: at least 1 phonemic liq
rel small #: none

Front 19

Phonological Implicational Universals (Cs) 4

Back 19

1) VD obstruents imply VL obstruents
2) (Very few langs) VL Sonorants imply VD sonorants
3) Frics imply stops
- some langs lack frics
4) affricates imply frics+stops
- many have no affric phonemes

Front 20

Phonological universals + tendencies (prosodic features - tone)

Back 20

1) #. Tone langs most often: 2 contrasting tone levels (usu High/Low)
- 3 tones (H/M/L): also rel. common
- 5 and above pract'ly unknown

Front 21

Phonological Implicational Universals (prosodic features - tone)

Back 21

1) contour tones imply level tones
- reverse is extremely rare
2) complex contour tones (rising-falling, falling-rising) imply simple contour tones
- mandarin 4 contrastive tones - including H, rising, falling, *falling rising

Front 22

Phonological classification by stress

Back 22

1) fixed stress lang - stress position predictable (penult- Port)
2) free stress lang - stress position not predictable, must be learned
-phonemic stress - distinguishes between words - russian

Front 23

Phonological universals (syll structure) 3

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1) CV and V unmarked - all langs
2) complex onset implies simple onset
3) complex coda implies simple coda AND sylls w/ no coda

Front 24

Morphological Classifications 4

Back 24

1) isolating/analytic - contains only words consisting of a single (root) morpheme
- gram cats expressed by separate word
- sentence position varies, means is indep word
- Mandarin primarily isolating
2) Synthetic - permit multimorphemic words w/ nonsentential meanings
- vast majority of langs
>3) Agglutinating - words are multimorphemic but easily divided into component parts
-each affix typically reps single gramm'l cat or meaning
- Turkish
>4) Fusional/inflectional - multimorphemic words but w/ affixes marking several gram'l cats/meanings simultaneously
- Spanish verbs
5) Polysynthetic - single, multimorphemic words can serve as complete sentences

Front 25

English morph class

Back 25

1) isolating pattern in many verbal constructions (independent word "will" indicates future)
2) agglutination in derived words
3) fusional pronoun system
- single form - person, number, gender, case - him

Front 26

Morphology: Implic Universals 3

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1) inflectional affixes imply deriv affixes
2) if word has both deriv affix and inflec affix, deriv is closer to root
3) if lang has only suffixes, also only have postpositions
- Turkish

Front 27

Syntax universals and tendencies 6

Back 27

1) 95% of langs S-O (SOV, SVO, VSO)
- small # VOS: (Malagasy)
- rare (all S. Amer): OSV, OVS
2) VO word order implies prepositions
3) OV order means probably have postpositions (after N)
4) PPs usu. precede V in OV; follow V in VO
5)Manner adverbs precede V in OV; follow V in VO
6) strong pref for Gen+N in OV; weaker pref for N+Gen in VO - Engl. both

Front 28

Headedness

Back 28

?

Front 29

Syntax universals (grammatical hierarchy of relations of subject and direct object)

Back 29

subject less marked than DO, less marked than other
- ex of verb agreement - if verb agrees w/ DO, also agrees w/ S
- ex - rel clauses - almost all langs have subject relativization
- the child [who fell off the bike] vs the child [whom I met yesterday]
- EX- object pro(noun)-drop implies subject pro-drop

Front 30

phonological universals explained by ______ and ______

Back 30

need for perceptual distinctiveness (s louder + more prominent); need for maximally distant articulation (rel to perceptual distinctiveness

Front 31

morphological universal explained by_____ and ______

Back 31

suffixes evolving from postpositions; word must be formed before subclass is determined

Front 32

Main branches of Indo-European family 9

Back 32

Gabi Cant Itch Her Albino Arms Before Saving India
1) Germanic
2) Celtic
3) Italic
4) Hellenic
5) Albanian
6) Armenian
7) Baltic
8) Slavic
9) Indo-Iranian

Front 33

Germanic sub-branches 3

Back 33

1) (east)
- (gothic)
2) north/scandinavian
-icelandic, faroese (isl n of scotland), norwegian, swedish, danish
3) west
-german, english - frisian (north coast Holl, nw coast germany), dutch>afrikaans,Yiddish

Front 34

Celtic sub-branches 2

Back 34

1) (Continental)
- (Gaulish)
2) Insular - 2 groups
>1. Brythonic/British/P-Celtic
>>Welsh, Breton (nw France), (Cornish) - sw Brit
>2. Goidelic/Gaelic/Q-Celtic
>>Irish (west Ireland), (Manx), Scots Gaelic (nw Scotland)

Front 35

Italic/Romance sub-branches 4

Back 35

1) Ibero-romance
- port., spanish
2) Gallo-Romance
- French, Catalan, Romansch (switz)
3) Italo-Romance
- italian, sardinian
4) Balkano-romance
- romanian

Front 36

Helenic 1 member

Back 36

1) Greek

Front 37

Albanian 1 member

Back 37

1) Albanian (albania, former Yugoslavia, Greece, Italy)

Front 38

Armenian 1 member

Back 38

1) Armenia (repub of Armenia, Turkey, Iran, Syria, Lebanon, Egypt)

Front 39

Baltic 2 members

Back 39

1) Latvian
2) Lithuanian (elab case system)

Front 40

Slavic sub-branches 3

Back 40

1) East
- Russian, Ukranian, Byelorussian
2) West
-Czech, Slovak, Polish
3) South
-Bosnian/Croatian/Serbian (serbo-croatian), Bulgarian, Macedonian, Slovene

Front 41

Indo-Iranian sub-branches 2

Back 41

1) Indic (35) - N India, Pakistan, Bangladesh
-Hindu-Urdu (Ind Hindu v Pak muslims), Bengali, Marathi, Gujarati, Romany/Gypsy
2) Iranian
- Persian/Farsi, Pashto (afghanistan), Kurdish (Ir, Iq, Turk, Syr)

Front 42

Other Families

Back 42

1) Uralic - Finnish, Hungarian
2) Altaic - Turkish, Jap, Korean
3) Austronesian - Samoan, Fijian, Filipino, Indonesian
4) Austroasiatic - Vietnamese, Khmer
5) Afroasiatic - Arabic, Hebrew
6) Niger-Congo - Swahili

Front 43

best-known macrofamily/phyla

Back 43

Nostratic back 20,000 yrs
-Indo-European, Uralic, Altaic, etc
- phonetic changes over time obscure similarities

Front 44

Evidence or proof of relationship (2)

Back 44

- also can be inherited
1) mult. agreement in basic, unborrowable vocab w/ sound corresp
2) considerable and frequent agreement in grammatical formants and sound corresp