1036: 4P

LING 1030: The Diversity of Languages

• LANGUAGE AND LANGUAGES

What is a language?

Human Language vs. A language (French: Langage vs. Langue)

Human language (French �Langage�)= the communication system characteristic of the human species as compared to the communication system of other animal species.

A language (French �langue�) = the historically developed system of signs that the members of a social group use to communicate with each other.

The concrete reality of language: an idiolect

An idiolect is the individual variety of a language, i.e. a language as spoken by an individual human being.

This is the only reality of language we can actually observe. In all other cases we are dealing with abstractions.

Language Variation

Languages are continuously changing. This leads to the formation of new linguistic varieties.

The arrows below represent the fact that varieties such as Venetian and Toscan developed from a common variety that I call Proto-Italian:

Proto-Italian

Venetian Toscan Neapolitan Sicilian …….

We can represent this also as a �tree�.

Italian (Proto-Italian)

Venetian Toscan Neapolitan Sicilian etc.….

Different languages may be related in the same way. This is the case of the Romance languages that derive from Latin:

Latin (tree incomplete)

Italian Spanish Portuguese French ….

Venet. Tosc. Neap. etc. Castillian Andalusian etc. …. …… ….. …..

How many languages are there?

Ethnologue: 7,099 known living languages (https://www.ethnologue.com) E.g. English, German, Zulu, Vietnamese ...

(1) a. English: cat b. German: die Katze c. Zulu: umangoye

What about British and American English?

(2) a. American English: apartment, pants, fries b. British English: flat, trousers, chips

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Languages vs dialects

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English and German are two different languages because they are not mutually intelligible

British and American English are considered dialects of the same language, because the differences between them don’t affect mutual understanding

⇒ mutual intelligibility as a measure of diversity

(3) a. Hu haben šeli. (Hebrew) b. Han är min son. (Swedish) c. Hy is myn soan. (Frisian) d. He is my son. (English)

Mutual intelligibility is a continuum ⇒ The difference between languages and dialects is a continuum

Classifying two forms of speech as different languages is to some extent an arbitrary choice, convention and various sociological, political and cultural factors.

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Dutch and West Flemish are mutually intelligible, but they are spoken in different countries (the Netherlands and Belgium, respectively) and therefore are often thought of as different languages.

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Basque is considered to have between 6 and 9 dialects, but not all of them are fully intelligible among each other.

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Ethnologue’s criteria for languagehood

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1. “Two related varieties are normally considered varieties of the same language [dialects] if speakers of each variety have inherent understanding of the other variety at a functional level (that is, can understand based on knowledge of their own variety without needing to learn the other variety).”

⇒ Ex: British/American/Australian etc. English

These linguistic varieties share certain given sets of �peculiar� grammatical features.

In all of the Italian dialect the plural of the �masculine� nouns is formed by adding the suffix [-i] (or one of its developments)

Singular Plural (1) amic-o amic-i �friend�

In a related language such as Spanish, the plural of the same nouns is formed by adding the suffix [-s]:

Singular Plural (2) amig-o amig-o-s �friend�

Ethnologue’s criteria for languagehood

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2. “Where spoken intelligibility between varieties is marginal, the existence of a common literature or of a common ethnolinguistic identity with a central variety that both understand can be a strong indicator that they should nevertheless be considered varieties of the same language.”

⇒ Ex: Basque, varieties of Arabic

Ethnologue’s criteria for languagehood

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3. “Where there is enough intelligibility between varieties to enable communication, the existence of well-established distinct ethnolinguistic identities can be a strong indicator that they should nevertheless be considered to be different languages.”

⇒ Ex: Dutch and West Flemish; Norwegian, Swedish and Danish; Bosnian, Croatian and Serbian ...

Languagehood and linguistics

The distinction between languages and dialects is not directly related to linguistic differences between speech forms. It is to some extent arbitrary. The lack of unambiguous classification criteria might seem like a weakness of the field of linguistics, but it’s not! It’s the nature of language variation as being a continuum

How important is it to have a precise definition of language and dialect for the purposes of linguistic research?

⇒ not very.

Linguistics is the study of human language in all of its forms. Languages and dialects constitute different forms of human language.

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The parameters of language diversity: How do languages differ?

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Linguists are concerned with how languages differ and how they are similar!

This requires knowing what constitutes a language

The lexicon: lexical differences

One aspect of language is the vocabulary – knowing a languages requires knowing what individual words means This is something we can look up easier in a dictionary

(4) German and American English have a lot of lexical differences a. I like these pants. b. Ich mag diese Hose.

(5) British and American English have some lexical differences a. I like these pants. b. I like these trousers.

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The grammar: structural differences

Differences between languages do not reduce to difference in vocabularies. Languages have structural properties, e.g. word order English word order: Subject Verb Object (SVO)

(6) Dragons destroyed Westeros.

The structure is an important aspect of out linguistic knowledge

(7) The gurtil fleppered the cauricks.

Even though we don’t know the words, (7) is not completely meaningless!

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Our knowledge about language structure

We know how to form passive voice

(8) a. Dragons destroyed Westeros. b. Westeros was destroyed by dragons.

Active Voice Passive Voice

How do we know how to form passive voice? ⇒ not from the meaning!

(9) a. The gurtil fleppered the cauricks. b. The cauricks were fleppered by the gurtil.

Active Voice Passive Voice

We have linguistic knowledge beyond the meaning of words. We know how to form passive voice in (9) because we know the structure of English.

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The grammar: structural differences

Knowing the words does not guarantee understanding

(10) Boy in sitting the under friend her bad here a.

The string of words in (10) means nothing, even though each word has a meaning independently. The reason is that (10) is not structured properly ("a word salad").

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Word order across the languages of the word

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How many ways might subject, object, and verb combine?

Dragons destroyed Westeros. (SVO) Dragons Westeros destroyed. (SOV) Destroyed Westeros dragons. (VOS) Destroyed dragons Westeros. (VSO) Westeros destroyed dragons. (OVS) Westeros dragons destroyed. (OSV)

How often is each type attested?

⇒ SVO and SOV (1 & 2) are the most common word order patterns across languages.

Word order across the languages of the word (from WALS)

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Word order across the languages of the word

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Word order across the languages of the word

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Word order across the languages of the word

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If languages evolved freely we should expect all type of possible orders.

This is not what we find. In very few languages we find orders such as the following:

(9) a. VOS b. OSV c. OVS

The generalization is that the Subject tends to precede the Object.

This is an Universal of Language

Some languages have flexible word order

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Kayardild*

Bangaa dangkaya kurrija. Bangaa kurrija dangkaya. Dangkaya bangaa kurrija. Dangkaya kurrija bangaa. Kurrija bangaa dangkaya. Kurrija dangkaya bangaa.

‘The man sees the turtle.’ ‘The turtle sees the man.’

*a Tangkic language spoken on Bentinck Island and surrounding islands in

northwest Queensland, Australia, with fewer than ten fluent speakers

Some languages have flexible word order

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Kayardild

Bangaa dangkaya kurrija. Bangaa kurrija dangkaya. Dangkaya bangaa kurrija. Dangkaya kurrija bangaa. Kurrija bangaa dangkaya. Kurrija dangkaya bangaa.

‘The man-SUBJ sees the turtle-OBJ.’

Parameters of linguistic diversity

Lexical differences Structural differences Phonological differences ...

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Phonological differences: speech sounds

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What we typically call "accents" is a variety of a language with different phonology/pronunciation

(11) How do we pronounce the word ‘farmer’?

a. American English: [faɻməɻ]

b. British English: [fa:mə]

Phonological differences

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Languages differ in what speech sounds they use how speech sounds are organized

All languages have vowels (e.g. a, o, u) consonants (e.g. p, s, k)

But not all languages use the same speech sounds

Phonological differences

English: the vowels in cat and cut are different:

a. cat [kæt] b. cut [kʌt]

But many languages don’t have the sounds [æ] and [ʌ].

Instead, languages can have a single vowel, e.g. [a], similar to both the English [æ] and [ʌ] sounds. Spanish is a language like that (but also many Russian (Slavic) or Zulu (Bantu), and many others).

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Phonological differences

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Italian: the words Campania (Name of a region) and campagna (countryside) sound different

(13) a. Campania [kampania] b. campagna [kampaɲɲa]

Do you hear the difference?

Phonological differences

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Languages with clicks tonal languages

We can classify languages according to some of their properties:

For example, their word order. This is called a typological property of a language.

§In this case we have a �typological� classification of languages

§languages can also be classified genetically

TYPOLOGICAL CLASSIFICATION OF LANGUAGES

Genetic differences

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Languages change over time The more we go back in time, the less we understandable English seems (ever tried to read Old English?)

Beowulf,Prologue

../../../Beowulf in Old English (Prologue)(240p_H.263-MP3).flv

Language genealogy

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Old English is an ancestor of Middle English and Modern English

Old English

Middle English

Modern English

Old English and Middle English are dead languages (not spoken anymore)

Introduction

Language genealogy

Latin is the ancestor of several living languages

(14) The genealogy of Romance languages (tree incomplete)

Latin

Vulgar Latin

Portuguese French RomanianItalian Spanish

Classical Latin

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As we will see, Latin is historically related to Germanic, Celtic, Greek, Slavic, etc.:

(6) Proto-Indo-European (tree incomplete)

Latin Germanic Celtic Slavic Sanskrit

Italian Spanish English German Irish Welsh Russian Czech Hindi Oriya

Tree like this offers a way to classify languages in families, i.e. groups of languages that derive from the same �mother� language. This is what is called a genetic classification of languages

The Indo-European language family

Indo-European language groups

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Indo-European: diffusion

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Indo-Iranian

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Languages of the Indian subcontinent

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Uralic languages

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The Altaic languages

Turkic languages

Mongolic languages

Languages of the Caucasus

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Languages of Africa

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Sino-Tibetan languages

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Austronesian languages

Tai Kadai and Hmong-Khmer languages

Languages of Australia

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Introduction

Papuan languages

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That which is not Austronesian or Australian

The most linguistically diverse region in the world??

800+ languages in 20+ families

Papuan languages – East & West New Britian

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Pre-contact languages of North America

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Pre-contact languages of North America

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Pre-contact languages of South America

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Languages of Amazonia

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Top 20 most-spoken languages, in millions of native speakers

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1 Mandarin 845 German 90 11 2 Spanish 329 Javanese 85 12 3 English 328 Wu(Shanghaiese) 77 13 4 Hindi-Urdu 240 Telugu 70 14 5 Arabic 206 French 68 15 6 Bengali 181 Vietnamese 69 16 7 Portuguese 178 Korean 66 17 8 Russian 144 Tamil 66 18 9 Japanese 122 Italian 62 19 10 Punjabi 109 Yue(Cantonese) 56 20

Languages of the World, again

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