Typology and Diversity Flashcards
How many living languages?
about 7000
Where do living languages tend to cluster?
around the equator
- where humanity developed
- Sustains higher population densities
- less intensively colonised by Europeans
Morphological variation (3)
Isolating
Agglutinating
Fusional
Syntactic variation (3)
Constituent order
Case marking
verbal marking
What is linguistic typology?
Identifying what languages have in common, and what (if any) limits there are.
What are the most common constituent orders?
SVO
SOV
(not random, universally predetermined)
What are the least common constituent orders?
NODOM
OSV
OVS
What are the motivators for subject initial being most frequent across languages? (3)
usually a semantic agent
usually a topic
natural order of understanding
What are the tendencies in SOV languages? (4)
postpositions
adjective noun
possessor noun
Suffixes
What are the tendencies in SVO languages?(4)
Prepositions
Noun Adjective
Noun possessor
Prefixes
What are typological universals?
what is necessarily present in any human language.
What is impossible or unlikely.
What is an absolute?
rule that applies to every language
What is a non-absolute?
Statistical tendency, applies to most languages
What is a non-implicational?
a simple statement that has no dependants
What is an implicational?
a statement that says if… then…
Name two absolute non-implicationals.
All language have nouns and verbs
All spoken langaugese have consonants and vowels
Name one absolute implicational.
If there is a plural form, then there is a singular
Name two non-absolute non-implicationals
Most languages have adjectives
Most languages put the subject at the start
Name non-absolute implicationals
If a language has affricates, it tends to have fricatives.
What is markedness?
When there are two options in a paradigmatic relationship, often they do not have equal status.
Unmarked: more frequent, default
marked: something added to the unmarked value.
What is markedness in phonology?
Many phonological features are binary, represented as +/-
they have asymmetric distribution
What is plural form marked with?
morphologically marked with a formal suffix.
Is singular form marked or unmarked in English?
unmarked
What is formal markedness?
linguistic material
What is functional markedness?
relates to relationship between two values
What is the umarked gender in French/common in most languages?
Masculine
What is an example of markedness in Lexicon?
gradable opposites
eg Tall is unmarked
Short is marked, implies a presupposition
When we categorise a language as (eg) SVO, we refer to the _____ order for that language.
unmarked
specific languages require knowledge of constituent order
