Typology Flashcards
What is mutual intelligibility
When speakers on average can understand each other
Canadian english and dutch dont understand each other meaning that its
Unintelligible
Canadian english and british english are
Mutual intelligibility.
What is a factor between varieties of language
politics
True or false, mutually intelligible varieties can be labelled as different languages
True. Swedish and norwegian can understand each other but not the same language.
What are called mutual unintelligible languages in the same country
Dialects. Catalan, spanish
True or false. Mutually intelligible can use different orthographic systems
True.
True or false. Mutually unintelligible varieties can use the same orthographic system
True. Cantonese vs Mandarin
What do we call the gradual transition between two non-mutually intelligible varieties.
Dialect continuum
What is conundrum
some speakers in the continuum dont understand each other. Most nearby languages understand each other
Are speakers evenly distributed between languages
No.
Most languages are spoken by more than 100,000 speakers.
False
What happens when the last native speaker of a language dies
Language death
How often does language death happens
Every 3 month
Is Latin a language death
No language change
Latin, Sanskrit, ancient Egyptian, survived as what language
Romance languages
Indic languages
Coptic
How many languages are there
7000
most language are spoken by less than 100 000 speakers
True
Around half language in the world are spoken by less than 10 000 speakers
Yes
Something that is true for all languages is called
Absolute universal
Something that is usually, but not always true
Universal tendency
When something has to be true if something else is true
Implicational universal. If theres marked structure, it implies there are unmarked structured
What is unmarked
Elements that are basic, easy to learn, cross-linguistically expected
What is marked
Structures/elements that are complex, difficult to learn, cross-linguistically rare
What are some absolute universals
All lang. exhibit linguistic creativity, have stops, have vowels, have stress, have morphology
What are some universal tendencies
Syllable obeys sonority principle. rising towards nucleus and falling away from nucleus.
Most common stop phonemes are (p,t,k)
Most languages have labial,nasals, fricatives consonants
What is an exception to sonority principle
Russian
What is an exception to the common stop phonemes
hawaiian lacks t
What is an exception of most language have labial consonants
Mohawk
What are some implicational universals
Presence of front rounded vowels = presence of front unrounded vowels
Presence of nasals phonemes = presence of oral phonemes
Presence of inflectional affixes = derivational affixes
Is inflectional but no derivational attested or unattested
Unattested
The statement ‘most languages have nasal consonants’ is an example of
universal tendency
