Linguistics 5 Chapter 12

Language Families

- A single language can develop into several languages - In order for different dialects to develop into separate languages, groups of speakers must remain relatively isolated from one another - separated by physical barriers such as mountain ranges and great bodies of water - or separated by social and political barriers such as those drawn along tribal, religious, ethnic, or national boundaries

Again... Other Language Families

- Aboriginal Australian languages: only about 100 still survive; are classed into the Pama-Nyungan and Non-Pama-Nyungan groups - Papuan languages: there are more than 60 different language families with 800 languages - Nostratic Macrofamily: the theory that several language families generally regarded as distinct are descendents of a common ancestor language

Polynesian Language Family

- By examining the systematic differences in the cognate lists and correspondence sets, we can: - determine that some Polynesian languages are more closely related than others - hypothesize what sounds the proto-language had - hypothesize a vocabulary set for the proto-language

Comparative Reconstruction

- Comparative reconstruction reconstructs an ancestor language from the evidence that remains in daughter languages - Its premise is that, borrowing aside, similar forms with similar meanings across related languages are reflexes of a single form with a related meaning in the parent language - Cognates are words that have developed from a single, historically earlier word - Correspondence sets are sets of sounds in different languages that correspond to an ancestral sound

Native American Languages

- Compared to the Old World, the linguistic situation in the New World is bewildering, with numerous Native American language families in North and South America - While proposals for the genealogical integration of these languages have been made, solid evidence for a pan-American link is lacking - Many Native American languages are extinct or dying at alarming rates as younger generations are pressured to adopt English, Spanish, and Portuguese

Computer and History of Language

- Computers have been very helpful in looking at large quantities of data for historical analysis - Helsinki Corpus: texts from Old English through Early Modern English - ARCHER: eight British (and some American) written and spoken registers from 1650 to 1990

Bilingualism or multilingualism

- In a multilingual community, children grow up speaking several languages - Use of each language is often compartmentalized, as when one is used at home and another at school or at work - Multilingualism is such a natural phenomenon in areas of language contact that it is extremely widespread throughout the world

Polynesia

- Islands offer an excellent opportunity to study what happens when a protolanguage evolves into distinct daughter languages - Polynesia is one of three cultural areas in the South Pacific and is home to several related languages

Language Chaneg

- Languages change over the years - Usually the most noticeable differences between generations are in vocabulary - Pronunciations change too Sporadic sound change (e.g., nuclear and realtor) Regular sound change (Don and Dawn; wok and walk) - Syntax and morphology also change over time

Reconstructing Linguistic Past

- Modern Polynesian languages and archeological records indicate that - the islands were populated by people who shared a common language they traveled by sea from west to east, settling islands on the way - Linguistic similarities demonstrate that the languages of Polynesia are related

Pidgin (2)

- Pidgins do not have native speakers and are usually used for a restricted range of purposes - Pidgins are found around the world, including West Africa, the Caribbean, the Far East and the Pacific - English, French, Portuguese, Spanish, Dutch, Swedish, German, Arabic, and Russian have all served as bases for pidgins

Creoles

- Pidgins may begin to be used in more situations, and a diverse linguistic population may need a lingua franca - A creole language is a former pidgin that has "acquired" native speakers - Creoles are structurally complex, eventually as complex as any other language, and they differ from pidgins in that they exhibit less variability from speaker to speaker than pidgins do

Indo-European Family

- Proto Germanic (English, Swedish, Danish, German, Dutch, Norwegian) _ Latin (Portuguese, Rumanian, Spanish, Italian)

Austronesian Family

- The Austronesian family has over 1,200 languages scattered over one-third of the Southern Hemisphere - It includes Malay in Indonesia and Malaysia; Javanese in Indonesia; Tagalog (or Pilipino, the official language of the Philippines); Cebuano, another language of the Philippines; and Malagasy, the principal language of Madagascar

Other Language Families

- The Dravidian Family: Spoken principally in southern India; Tamil, Malayalam, Kannada, and Telugu - The Mon-Khmer Family: 150 languages spoken in Southeast Asia (Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Thailand, and Myanmar) and in China and India -The Tai Family: The best-known languages of the Tai family are Thai and Lao - The Caucasian Family: in Turkey, Iran, and countries that were part of the former Soviet Union; Georgian - The Turkic Family: Turkish, Uzbek - The Uralic Family: Finnish; Hungarian; Estonian; Lapp (see Figure 13-5) - The Niger-Congo Family: Sub-Saharan Africa; Congo, Wolof, Yoruba, Igbo, Swahili, Zulu

Sino-Tibetan Family

- There are 400 East Asian languages, which are divided into a Sinitic (or Chinese) group and a Tibeto-Burman group - The Sinitic group includes more than a dozen named varieties (including Hakka, Jinyu, Mandarin, Min Nan, Wu, Xiang (or Hunan), Yue, and Cantonese) - The Tibeto-Burman group contains the rest of the Sino-Tibetan languages, but many have few speakers

Reconstructing Linguistic Past

- There is evidence of massive migrations from Central Asia to Europe about 4000 B.C. by a people who probably spoke Proto-Indo-European (see the family tree on the previous slide) - Combined with what we can reconstruct of ancestral languages, archaeological records enable researchers to make educated guesses about where our ancestors came from and where they migrated to, as well as how they lived and died

Language Family

A parent language and the daughter languages that have developed from it are called a language family

Nativization

A possible side effect of multilingualism is nativization, which takes place when a community adopts a new language (in addition to its native language) and modifies the structure of that new language, thus developing a dialect that becomes characteristic of the community (e.g., Indian English)

Cognate

Connection between languages; the same word in different sub-branch of a language family

Indo-European Language Family

Latin is the parent of Italian and French and Proto-Germanic is the parent of English and German

Historical Linguistics and History

Linguistic evidence combined with archaeological evidence leads to the following hypotheses: 1. The speakers of Proto-Polynesian inhabited the coastal region of a high island or a group of high islands 2. This homeland is likely to have been in the region between Samoa and Fiji, including the islands of Tonga, Uvea, and Futuna 3. The ancient Polynesians were fishermen, cultivators, and seafarers 4. Around the first century A.D., the ancient Polynesians traveled eastward from their homeland, settling eastern Polynesia: Tahiti, the Cook Islands, the Marquesas, the Tuamotu, and the neighboring island groups 5. Then, between the fourth and sixth centuries, Easter Island, Hawaii, and New Zealand were settled from eastern Polynesia.

Indo-European Family (2)

Romance languages: French, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, Rumanian, Catalan... Slavonic languages: Russian, Ukranian, Serbian, Croatian, Polish, Czech... Indo-Iranian languages: Persian, Pashto, Hindi-Urdu, Bengali, Bhojpuri... Hellenic: Greek Celtic: Irish Gaelic, Scots Gaelic, Breton, Welsh

Afroasiatic Family

The Afroasiatic family has about 375 languages across northern Africa and western Asia

Pidgins

contact languages that develop where groups are in a dominant/subordinate situation - Pidgins arise when members of a politically or economically dominant group do not learn the native language of the people they interact with as political or economic subordinates. - To communicate, members of the subordinate community create a simplified variety of the language of the dominant group as their own second language