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