Chapter 7: Classification of Languages Flashcards
Dialects
Have mutual Intelligibility and are understood by a variety of speakers from different regions
Linguistic Typology
Linguistic classification based on structural and functional features
Genetic Classification
Linguistic classification based on descent
E.g. Latin
Areal Clasification
Linguistic classification based on geographical context
Absolute Universals
Structural patterns or traits that occur in all languages
Universal Tendencies
Structural patterns or traits that occur in most languages
Implicational Universals
When the presence of one trait implies another
E.g. The presence of nasal vowels implies oral vowels
The Most Common Vowel System has _____ Vowels
5 (2 high, 2 mid, 1 low)
The Most Common Vowel Phoneme is _____
a (i and u also common)
Free Stress
Occurs in languages whose stress varies in position
Tone Language
A Language that uses pitch to convey different meanings
E.g. Mandarin
The Most Common Fricative is _____
s
Languages with Affricates will also have _____ and _____
Fricatives and stops
If a Language has _____ Obstruents, it’s Likely to have _____ Ones too
Voiced; voiceless
Isolating/Analytic Languages
Avoid affixes and use free forms to express grammar
Agglutinating Languages
Use lots of affixes, each one to express single pieces of informations
Fusional/Inflectional Languages
Has root/affix combinations; single affixes can convey several meanings
Polysynthetic Languages
Single words can carry long strings of roots and affixes that function as sentences
If A Language has _____ Affixes, it Will have _____ Affixes
Inflectional; derivational
T/F
If a language has only suffixes, it will only have postpositions
True
3 Most Common Sentence Structures
SOV, SVO, VSO
If a Language has VO word ordoer, it will have _____; if it has OV Word Order, it will have _____
Prepositions; postpositions
Indo-European Family
Germanic, Celtic, Hellenic, Albanian, Italic, Slavic, Baltic, Armenian, Indo-Iranian
Germanic
Gothic, Icelandic, Faroese, English, German, Dutch
Celtic
Welsh, Breton, Irish, Scot Gaelic, Gaulish
Romance
Spanish, Portuguese, French, Catalan, Italian, Sardinian, Romanian
Hellenic
Greek
Albanian
Albanian (spoken in Albania, Yugoslavia, Greece and Italy)
Armenian
Armenian
Baltic
Latvian and Lithuanian
Slavic
Russian, Ukrainian, Czech, Slovak, Polish, Bulgarian, Slovene
Indo-Iranian
Persian, Pashto, Kurdish, Hindi-Urdu, Bengali, Romany
Isolates
Languages with no known family
