Lecture 2: Languages of the World
[Note: these are lightly edited versions of overheads and notes used
in class. They are provided in order to help you study, but they are not
a substitute for coming to class and being prepared. The notes are incomplete,
and will often be hard to make sense of if you were not in class.]
Outline: Languages of the World
- 1. Diversity of languages
- 2. Language grouping & language universals
- 3. Language death and revival
1. Diversity of Languages
Number of languages and numbers of speakers
- World population:5.5 billion people
- Number of languages spoken (estimated): 5000+ languages
However, you could speak to over halfof the world's population if you
know just 8 languages!
| some widely spoken Asian languages |
some widely spoken European languages |
| Mandarin |
864 mi |
English |
443 mi |
| Hindi |
352 mi |
Spanish |
341 mi |
| Bengali |
184 mi |
Russian |
293 mi |
| Japanese |
125 mi |
Portuguese |
173 mi |
| |
1525 mi |
|
1250 mi |
2. Language Grouping
Ways of grouping languages
- 1. Common history
- 2. Common sounds or grammar (typology)
- 3. Common politics or religion
a. Historical grouping
Similar Lexical Items ('cognates')
"Basic terms"
| English |
German |
French |
| foot |
Fuss |
pied |
| hand |
Hand |
main |
| blood |
Blut |
sang |
| drink |
trinken |
boire |
| full |
voll |
plein |
| stone |
Stein |
pierre |
Government & administration terms
| English |
German |
French |
| government |
Regierung |
gouvernement |
| prince |
Furst |
prince |
| court |
Hof |
court |
| society |
Gesellschaft |
societé |
| pray |
beten |
prier |
| judge |
Richter |
juge |
Accidental Similarity
| Language A |
Language B |
English |
| ban |
bhanem |
'woman' |
| allaban |
alnoba |
'person' |
| lion-obhair |
lhab |
'netting |
| dun |
odana |
'town' |
| claden |
kladen |
'snowflake' |
| bata |
pados |
'boat' |
| cuithe |
cuiche |
'gorge' |
| monadh |
monaden |
'mountain' |
Language A is Scots Gaelic (Scotland). Language B is Northeastern Algonquian
(Maine). It is almost certain that these languages have never been in contact
with one another.
Regular sound changes
Grimm's Law
| Sanskrit |
Latin |
English |
| p |
p |
f |
| pitar |
pater |
father |
| pad |
pes |
foot |
|
piscis |
fish |
| pasu |
pecu |
fee |
| |
|
|
| t |
t |
th |
| trayas |
tres |
three |
| |
pater |
father |
| bhratar |
|
brother |
- Indo-European 'p' --> Germanic 'f'
- Indo-European 't' --> Germanic 'th'
Languages grouped by history: generally found in similar areas
of world e.g.
- Niger-Congo family (central Africa)
- Austronesian (SE Asia, Madagascar)
- but... English (N. America, Europe, S. Africa, Australasia)
b. Grammatical Grouping
Grouping by Phonology
- 1. Sounds
- a. "Clicks": Bushman languages of Kalahari Desert (S. Africa),
Damin secret language of N Australia
- b. Front rounded vowels: NW Europe soeur 'sister' (French) müde
'tired' (German): includes Romance languages, Germanic languages, and Finnish,
and excludes some German-speaking areas. i.e. doesn't follow historically
defined set of languages.
- 2. Sound patterns, e.g. syllables CV CCVCC
Grouping by Morphology
Isolating languages:
- one word, one form
- Khi toi den nha ban toi, chung toi bat dau lam bai.
- when I come house friend I, plural I begin do lesson.
- 'When I came to my friend's house, we began to do lessons.' (Vietnamese)
Inflecting languages:
- prefixes, suffixes, stem changes express meanings
- trink-en 'drink' (German) drink-1prs.plur.pres
- sing-s (-3prs.sing.pres)
- sang (-past)
Incorporating languages:
- words built of many pieces: stems and inflections
- anngyaghllangyugtuq
- anngya- ghlla- ng- yug- tuq
- boat- AUGMENT-acquire-want-3.sing
- 'He wants to acquire a big boat' (Siberian Yupik, Eskimo)
Grouping by Syntax
- SVO The dog chased the cat (English, French, Thai)
- SOV The dog the cat chased (Japanese, Eskimo, Turkish)
- VSO Chased the dog the cat (Irish, Hebrew, Tagalog)
- VOS Chased the cat the dog (Huave, Coeur d'Alene)
Syntactic Generalizations
- "If a language has SOV word order, then auxiliary verbs follow
the verb"
-
- English: SVO John is running Lucie has left (i.e. verb follows auxiliary)
-
- German, Japanese,Korean:
- SOV basic word order, verb precedes auxiliary
c. Political Grouping
"Mutual intelligibility": if two speakers can understand
one another, then they must be speaking the same language.
But this definition of 'language' doesn't seem to correspond very well
to what we call languages.
- 1. Norwegian & Danish: mutually intelligible, different 'languages'
- 2. Chinese 'dialects': far from mutually intelligible
- 3. 1990 Serbo-Croatian, 1995 Serbian, Croatian, Bosnian
3. Language Death and Survival
Language Death
- "The coming century will see the death or the doom of 90% of mankind's
languages" Michael Krauss Alaskan Languages Center
-
- Two-thirds of the world's languages have less than 10,000 speakers
Causes of language death
- few speakers
- no young speakers
- low prestige for language
- contact with other languages
Examples
- Martuthunira (NW Australia): speakers killed off by exploitation
and disease
- Yiddish (Central Europe): speakers killed or dispersed by Holocaust
- Faroese (North Atlantic): MTV causes language death??
- Native American languages: influence of English
Language revival & creation
- young speakers
- increased prestige
- lack of contact
Examples
- Hebrew: creation of new territory
- Nicaraguan Sign Language: no competing language for deaf in
Nicaragua