Chapter 6 - World Languages and Language Families Flashcards
Sanskrit
- Discovered by Sir William Jones in 1789
- Gave insight to the relationship between languages
Proto-Indo-European (PIE)
- Related Sanskrit and other Indian languages to European languages
- Reconstructed language
- Hypothesized language family
Name the major Proto-Indo European branches.
- Albanian
- Armenian
- Baltic
- Celtic
- Germanic
- Greek
- Indo-Iranian
- Italic
- Slavic
Describe the Albanian branch
- Includes Albanian, Gheg
- Spoken in Albania and Serbia
Describe the Armenian branch
- Included Armenian
- Spoken in Armenia
Describe the Baltic branch
- Includes Latvian, Lithuanian
- Spoken in Latvia and Lithuania
Describe the Celtic branch
Continental branch (Extinct)
Insular branch
{Brythonic / P-Celtic}
-Welsh, Breton, Cornish (Ex)
{Goildelic / Q-Celtic}
-Welsh, Manx (Ex)
-Spoken in the UK and Ireland
Describe the Germanic branch
West Germanic:
-Includes Yiddish, English, Frisian, Dutch
North Germanic:
{West Scandinavian}
-Includes Faroese, Icelandic
{East Scandinavian}
-Includes Danish, Swedish
East Germanic:
- Includes Gothic, Bargundian, Vanadian
- All East Germanic Languages are extinct
-Spoken in Germany, Scandinavia, North America etc.
Describe the Greek branch
- Includes Greek, Pontic
- Spoken in Greece
Describe the Indo-Iranian branch
- Includes Sanskrit, Hindi
- Spoken in India, Pakistan etc.
Describe the Italic Branch
Western Romance
{Ibero-Romance}
-Includes Spanish, Portuguese, Catalan, Castilian, Austrian
{Gallo Romance}
-Includes Lombard, Venetian, French, Walloon
Italian / Cillian
-Includes Italian
-Spoken in Italy, France, Spain, Portugal etc.
Describe the Slavic branch
West Slavic
-Includes Czech, Slovak, Polish
East Slavic
-Includes Russian, Ukrainian, Belarusian
South Slavic
-Includes Bulgarian, Macedonian, Serbo-Croatian, Slovene
Latin
- Hard to classify as it is has no native speakers, but the Vatican state and Catholic church use it
- Oldest Italic language
Pidgin
Two languages meet and attempt to communicate
Creole
- A creole is formed when a Pidgin language evolves far enough to start having native speakers
- A mash up of two different languages that has native speakers
What are the two unique Germanic languages in Canada?
Hutterisch and Plautdietsch
Differences between Walloon and French
- Walloon has no gender marking
- Walloon has nasal vowels and distinct vowel length
- Walloon’s adjectives precede their nouns
What are some typological features of the Slavic branch?
- Palatal consonants [tS] / [d3]
- Fusional Morphology
Describe the Uralic family
Finno-Urgic
{Urgic}
-Includes Hungarian, Khanty, Mansi
{Finnic}
-Includes Finnish, Estonian
Typology: agglutinating, vowel harmony, no gender morphology (not even pronouns)
-Indo-European Family
Describe the Altaic language family
Turkic
-Includes Turkishir, Turkmen, Uzbek, Kazakh etc.
Mongolic
-Includes Mongolian, Buryat
Tungusic
-Includes Evenki, Nani, Manch
Japonic
-Includes Japanese, Ryukyuan
Korean
-Includes Korean
Typology: Agglutinating, vowel harmony
Describe the Afro-Asiatic Branch
Berber
-Spoken in Libya, Algeria, Morocco, Mauritania
Chadic
-Spoken in Nigeria, Cameroon, Chad
Cushititc
-Spoken in Ethiopia, Somalia, Eritrea
Semetic
-Spoken in Israel (Hebrew), Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Syria, Iraq (Arabic), Ethiopia (Amharic)
Omotic
Egyptian (Extinct)
-Includes Coptic and Ancient Egyptian
Typology: Templatic morphology, VSO word order, Glottalization, Pharyngealization
Describe the Sino-Tibetan branch
Chinese
- Largest branch in terms of number of speakers
- Includes Mandarin, Cantonese etc.
Tibeto-Burman
-Spoken in Tibet and Burma
Typology: Isolating morphology, tonal
Isolating Morphology
One morpheme conveys the meaning of a word
Eg. Chinese is very isolating, as each character (morpheme) represents one word
Agglutinating Morphology
- Multiple suffixes added to word roots
- Each suffix conveys some type of meaning
- Lots of noun cases
Phoneme
Distinct speech sounds
Morpheme
Smallest units of language that convey meaning
Affix
Morphemes that attach before (prefix) or after (suffix) the root
Analytic Languages
- Isolating languages
- No affixes
- 1 word = 1 root morpheme
Synthetic Language
- Fusional / Agglutinating languages
- Contain cases and holes
Fusional Language
- 1 word = 1 root + inflectional morphemes
- Inflectional Morpheme: encodes several meanings
Eg. Russian, French
Polysynthetic Language
1 word = 1 sentence
-Contains root word (verb/noun), the rest of the meaning is conveyed in affixes
Eg. Cree, Inuit and many other North American Indigenous languages
Mixed Type Language
Languages with elements from two or more morphological categories
Eg. English = fusional + isolating
Diachronic
Historically isolating language
Templatic Morphology
- Seen in Semitic languages
- Consonantal roots with added vowels to convey meaning
Preposition
Words that come before the noun
Postposition
Words that come after the noun
Syntactic Typology
- Word order
- Scrambling languages can move their words around
- Unmarked word order is the basic, most common word order found in any particular language
Comparitve Method
-Comparing phonemes in corresponding words in various languages
Two major rules:
-Sound change plausibility =Sounds are more likely to... = be deleted rather than inserted =be palatalized before front vowels =be voiced between vowels be devoiced word finally
-Majority rule
=If there is one exception, it will be ignored
Eg. If all words in a cognate begin with s except for one., reconstruction will include a s at the beginning
Segmental Sound Change
Simplification of sounds
Eg. Deaffrication
Sequential Sound Change
- Change in sound sequence
- Most common
Eg. Assimilation
Auditory Based Sound Change
Based on auditory similarites
Assimilation
- Sequential sound change
- Two sound segments become more similar
- Assimilation of place, manner, voicing or palatalization
Dissimilation
- Sequential sound change
- Two sound segments become less similar
- Can occur at a distance
- Dissimilation of place, manner, voicing or palatalization
Epenthesis
- Sequential sound change
- Addition of a sound segment into a word
- Caused by anticipation of upcoming sounds
- Can aid in pronunciation
Metathesis
- Sequential sound change
- Sound segments get shifted around
- Spoonerisms
Vowel Reduction / Weakening
Weakening of a vowel to a schwa
Vowel Deletion
Apocope: word final vowel deletion
Syncope: word internal vowel deletion
Consonant Deletion
- Loss of consonant in any position
- Lost consonant still reflected in spelling
Eg. Knight, knife etc.
Consonant Weakening
Scale of consonantal strength: (strongest to weakest)
Voiceless Stops
Voiceless Fricatives / Voiced Stops
Voiced Fricatives
Nasals
Liquids
Glides
-Consonant strengthening occurs in the opposite direction
Degemination
-Geminate consonants are stronger than degeminate consonants
Eg. tt - geminate
Intervocalic / Intersonorant Voicing
- Assimilation
- Voiceless stops become voiced
Spirantization / Frication
Fricatives occur between two vowels intervocalically
Sonority Scale
From most to least sonorous:
Vowels
Approximants
Nasals
Fricatives
Affricates
Stops
Split
Same phoneme splits into separate phonemes in different dialects of the same language
Merge
Two distinct phonemes become one phoneme in a language
Shift
Systematic rearrangement of phonemes in a sound system
Grimm’s Law
- Rasmus Rask and Jakob Grimm
- Explains the differences in sounds between Germanic languages and other Indo-European languages
Great Vowel Shift
- Otto Jespersen
- Officially began 15th century, officially ended 18th century
- Major series of changes affecting how vowels in English are pronounced
- Affected every dialect
