INTRO – Whaley Ch.1 Flashcards
Noam Chomsky - explanation of Linguistic Unity
- due to human biology
- humans endowed with “language faculty” - distinct from other cognitive abilities
- children axposed to language/s of their speech community –> leads to rapid acquisition of complex/mature grammatical system
- to accomplish, lang faculty must contain enough Info (UNIVERSAL GRAMMAR) to ensure child learn lang accurately in space of 4/5 years
• What is Typology?
o “ the classification of languages or components of languages based on shared formal characteristics” – Whaley 1997:7
o NOT a theory of grammar (like functional grammar/government/ binding theory) – NOT a framework desgigned to model how language works
o Relatively NEW field of Linguistics – Journal established 1998 (De Gruyter)
GOALS OF TYPOLOGY
IDEAL GOAL: (croft 2003) what is a possible human language?
o Compare and classify languages of the world
o Identify cross-linguistic patterns
o Correlations between patterns and other factors (cognition/geography)
o – Look at languages as a whole, identify any generalisations we can make, try to find out WHY it is so (explanations NOT language internal)
typology encompasses
o Cross-linguistic comparison o Linguistic diversity o Search for patterns o Search for universals o Determine the range of possible variation
Typology is complex and polysemous
o Etymologically: the study of types
o A typology as a “catalogue of types”
o USEFUL to distinguish between
>Language typology
>Linguistic typologypolysemy - language typology
o Classification of languages into groups
o Can be based on just one feature
> EG phonology: with or without clicks, with or without tones
> EG Morphological types: agglutinating vs isolating (meaningful morphemes teaming up to create words vs more individual words)
polysemy linguistic typology
o Classification of component systems of language
o A catalogue of possible strategies for a given function
o E.g. strategies for expressing POSSESSION
> Head-marking – the Possession is marked [English: her house]
> Dependent-marking – genitive on Possessor [English: Jane’s house]
> External possession (clausal) [French: tu m’as coupé les cheveux]
> Comitative [Australian languages: be ‘car-with’].
Group languages based on strategies they dispay - can be SEVERAL - so we can identify lang “PROFILES”
Language Profiles
Group languages based on the strategies they display
Eg. Possession in Australian languages
• Pama-nyungan languages:
o predominantly dependent-marking (genitive)
o + comitative markers
• Non-Pama-nyungan languages:
o head-marking + clausal constructions
o comitative markers
• THE QUEST FOR GENERALISATION
o Many ways to classify langs and their properties
o Common endeavour = generlization, search for UNIVERSAL FEATURES
o Come up with statements that concern as many languages as possible, best possible scenario = concern ALL languages
(linguistic universals)
LINGUISTIC UNIVERSALS
- Foundational work by Greenberg (1963, 1966)
- He listed 45 universals
- The basis of a lot of typological work
o People who study typology now share a well-established “typology” of universals
> Absolute (exceptionless) vs statistical (with exceptions)
Unconditional vs conditional/implicational
• Absolute (exceptionless) vs statistical (with exceptions) universals
ALL langs have property X vs Most languages have property X
o No absolute unconditional universals? Evans & Levinson 2009 – opposing chomsky’s Universal Grammar with “The myth of language universals”
o This would leave us with strong statistical universals – 99.9% of langs, argue does it matter? Such a large percentage is already significant
What is the difference between chomsky universalists and strong statistical quasi-universalists?
- inherent conditioning vs empirical pressures
- look for different reasons as to why languages in the world differ from eachother
o Typology looks for the latter (empirical pressures)
Unconditional universals
o Generic Properties:
- All languages have a noun/verb distinction. (or all langs have at least two distinct part-of-speech categories – Week 4) – one of the least disputed
- All languages have ORAL VOWELS.
- All languages have RECURSION.
- All languages have CONSTINUENCY
• Disputed by Evans & Levinson (2009) (what about sign langs?)
Unconditional universals
o More specific features:
- All languages have PERSON and NUMBER DISTINCTIONS.
- In conditional statements, the conditional clause precedes the conclusion as the normal order in all languages.
- All languages have EMOTION WORDS (Wierkzbicka 1999).
MANY UNCONDITIONAL UNIVERSALS REMAIN UNEXPLORED
♣ All langs have interjections?
♣ All langs are linear? (Movie: Arrival)
Conditional universals – UNRESTRICTED/IMPLICATIONAL universals
- If a langugage has sounds, then it has vowels
> Provides for exclusion of sign languages - If a language has nasal vowels then it has oral vowels
> No langs have only nasal vowels – i.e. set of langs with nasal vowels is a subset of langs with vowels - Greenberg 1966 – most of his unversals are implicational
• 34: No language has a trial number unless it has a dual. No language has a dual unless it has a plural.
> If a lang has a trial, it has a dual. If a lang has a dual, it has a plural. - if a lang has VSO order then it is prepositional
> Eat jane yogurt»_space; Jane lives in canberra
