language classifications typological classifications of languages
TRANSCRIPT
LANGUAGE CLASSIFICATIONS
Typological Classifications of Languages
Language classifications
Genetic Typological
Sanskrit Ukrainian EnglishМāтар - матір - motherВідгава- вдова - widowСвасар - сестра - sisterМус - миша - mouseВāюс - вітер - windГірі - гора - hill Нава - новий - newдваӮ - два - twoТраяс - три - threeПанча - пять - five
Language classifications
Genetic
Languages share linguistic properties because they’re genetically related, historically, they evolved from the same parent language.
Historical Comparative Linguistics
Typological Typological classifications
are based on shared formal characteristics of languages, irrespective of their origin: properties of sounds, words, sentences.
Linguistic Typology
Typological classifications
English (Germanic), Classical Arabic (Semitic), Russian (Slavic), form wh-questions by placing the wh-phrase at the front of the sentence (called wh-fronting):
Who did you meet?
What did he do? By contrast, Chinese, Japanese, and Egyptian Arabic
form wh-questions by leaving the wh-phrase in the end:
You met who?
He did what?
Typological classifications
Frederick Schlegel (1772-1829)August Schlegel ( 1767-1845)Wilhelm Humboldt (1767-1835)
Typological classifications
MorphologicalSyntacticPhonological
Morphological Classification
Isolating languagesAgglutinating languagesFlectional languages
synthetic languages analytic languages
Polysynthetic languages
Isolating Languages
Each word in the sentence consists of just one morpheme:
[ wƆ mǝn tan tçin ][ wƆ mǝn tan tçin lǝ ]
[ ta da wƆ mǝn ]
Agglutinating Languages
Each morpheme expresses only one meaning element.
The breaks between morphemes (e.g. between root and affix) are usually easy to identify.
Agglutinating LanguagesTurkish
ev - house el - hand ev-im - my houseev-e - to a house ev-in - of a houseev-de - in a houseev-imiz - our houseev-ler - housesev-ĵik-ler - little housesev-ler-de , ev-ler-imiz-e N-A-pl-pron-prepof our little handsel-ĵik- ler -imiz -in
Agglutinating LanguagesSwahili
Present Past Future ni-na-soma ni-li-soma ni-ta-soma u-na-soma a-na-soma
Flectional (Fusional)
each affixal morpheme expresses more than one meaning
morphemes are frequently fused together (root morphemes are affected by affixal morphemes)
Ukr.: чита-є чита-в
пис-ав пиш-е
несу носив
Greek: lu-o ‘I loose’
lu-ousin ‘They loose’
Flectional languages
Synthetic
(читає, читають, читав, України, Петро бачив Анну)
Analytic
(is reading, are reading, was reading, capital of Ukraine, Peter saw Ann)
Polysynthetic (Incorporating)
These languages typically combine many morphemes to form very long words.
qasu-iir-sar-vig-ssar-si-ngit-luinar-nar-puq
‘Someone did not find a completely suitable resting place.’
Historically, synthetic morphology is usually derived from agglutinative morphology, which in turn is derived from the analytic use of function words:
isolating→analytic→agglutinating →syntheticHence, different languages usually possess
features of different morphological types
Agglutination features in English
СomerseComersial, comersialism,comercialist(ic)establishestablish-mentestablish-ment-aryestablish-ment-ari-anestablish-ment-ari-an-ismdis-establish-ment-ari-an-ism anti-dis-establish-ment-ari-an-ism
Synthetic features in English
write - wrote - written
study - studied
study - studies
good - better
wife - wives
Analytic features in English
Come- are coming
Take – will take
Does – is done
Get – have got
Difficult – more difficult
A book - the book
Polysynthetic features in English
a devil-may-care attitudea merry-go-round
The type of language is established on the basis of its predominant features.
Isolating__E_____________U______Polysynthetic
REVISION
What is the difference of genetic and typological classification of languages?
What is the type of language based on? Which language type construct words from clearly
defined morphemes? In which language type affixes are not easy to separate
from the stem? Which language type has mostly one- morpheme words? Which language type combines many morphemes to
form very long words? Are there pure types of languages?
Comment on the slide
Sanskrit Ukrainian EnglishМāтар - матір - motherВідгава- вдова - widowСвасар - сестра - sisterМус - миша - mouseВāюс - вітер - windГірі - гора - hill Нава - новий - newдваӮ - два - twoТраяс - три - threeПанча - пять - five
d) Mandarin Ta chi fan le
he eat meal …
Syntactic classifications
Basic word orders
SVO, SOV, VSO, VOS, OVS, OSV
Basic word ordertypes in the world’s languages
1. SOV 45 % 2. SVO 42 %3. VSO 9 % 4. VOS 3 %5. OVS 1 %6. OSV 1 %
Phonological classifications
VocalicConsonantal
Language Consonants Vowels Total
Abkhaz 68 3 71
Italian 35 7 42
Ukrainian 33 5 38
Georgian 28 5 33
English 24 20 44
French 17 18 35
Finnish 14 16 30
Estonian 24 27 51
Thai 20 35 55
Phonological Classifications
tone languagesstress languages
Tonemes give paradigmatic prominence to a syllable, while stress mainly gives syntagmatic prominence.
Tone languages (languages with tonemes) Chinese:
ma 1 “mother” a high level tone
ma 2 “hemp” a rising tone
ma 3 “horse” a low falling-rising tone
ma 4 “to scold” a falling tone
Stress languages free stress(or unpredictable) fixed stress (or predictable)
• last syllable (French, Turkish)• first syllable (Czech, Hungarian, Latvian)• penultimate (second-last) syllable (Polish,
Swahili)
Home task:
Korunets I. p.33 Topics for class discussion
Home assignment Find 2 examples typical of each morphological
language type in Ukrainian and English