LANGUAGE CLASSIFICATIONS Typological Classifications of Languages

Language classifications Genetic Typological

Sanskrit Ukrainian English Мāтар - матір - mother Відгава - вдова - widow Свасар - сестра - sister Мус - миша - mouse Вāюс - вітер - wind Гірі - гора - hill Нава - новий - new дваӮ - два - two Траяс - три - three Панча - 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 Morphological Syntactic Phonological

Morphological Classification Isolating languages Agglutinating languages Flectional 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 Languages Turkish ev - house el - hand ev-im - my house ev-e - to a house ev-in - of a house ev-de - in a house ev-imiz - our house ev-ler - houses ev-ĵik-ler - little houses ev-ler-de , ev-ler-imiz-e N-A-pl-pron-prep of our little hands el-ĵik- ler -imiz -in

Agglutinating Languages Swahili 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.’

isolating→analytic→agglutinating →synthetic Historically, synthetic morphology is usually derived from agglutinative morphology, which in turn is derived from the analytic use of function words: isolating→analytic→agglutinating →synthetic Hence, different languages usually possess features of different morphological types

Agglutination features in English Сomerse Comersial, comersialism,comercialist(ic) establish establish-ment establish-ment-ary establish-ment-ari-an establish-ment-ari-an-ism dis-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 attitude a 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 English Мāтар - матір - mother Відгава - вдова - widow Свасар - сестра - sister Мус - миша - mouse Вāюс - вітер - wind Гірі - гора - hill Нава - новий - new дваӮ - два - two Траяс - три - three Панча - пять - five

d) Mandarin Ta chi fan le he eat meal …

Syntactic classifications Basic word orders SVO, SOV, VSO, VOS, OVS, OSV

Basic word order types in the world’s languages SOV 45 % SVO 42 % VSO 9 % VOS 3 % OVS 1 % OSV 1 %

Phonological classifications Vocalic Consonantal

Language Total Abkhaz 68 3 71 Italian 35 7 42 Ukrainian 33 5 38 Consonants Vowels Total Abkhaz 68 3 71 Italian 35 7 42 Ukrainian 33 5 38 Georgian 28 English 24 20 44 French 17 18 Finnish 14 16 30 Estonian 27 51 Thai 55

Phonological Classifications tone languages stress 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 last syllable (French, Turkish) 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