Linguistic typology Part 1: Review and Introductory Notions

Ling 001 Linguistic Typology Linguistics Linguistic Typology Part 1 Review and Introductory Notions Following our look at grammatical structures To this point we have examined linguistic structures at various sizes Sound structure Word Structure Sentence Structure Interpretation and Meaning This investigation, while dealing with different areas, shows common components Properties of the different areas Some common themes Linguistic representations involve abstract structures (i e structures that.

Linguistics: Linguistic Typology

Part 1: Review and Introductory Notions

Following our look at

grammatical structures

• To this point we have examined linguistic

structures at various sizes:

– Sound structure

– Word Structure

– Sentence Structure

– Interpretation and Meaning

• This investigation, while dealing with different areas, shows common components

Properties of the different

areas

• Some common themes

– Linguistic representations involve abstract structures (i.e

structures that we don’t hear or see per se)

– E.g the way that speech sounds are organized suggests an

analysis in terms of dimensions like place and manner of

Relating this to the central

point

• Remember in addition that there is a central argument that we began with

– Language is not a cultural invention; it is

something that the human brain develops along the lines of walking

– Language learners are guided in learning the

(abstract!) rules of how language is structured by innate linguistic competence

– In an abstract sense, all languages are ‘the

same’, that is, they accomplish the same things and are all reflections of this innate endowment

Further considerations and

questions

• At the same time, we know that

languages differ from one another (i.e when we don’t make the abstraction

above)

• Question: How do we talk about these

differences in light of the hypothesis that there is something universal and innate

Languages: Basic Facts

• How many languages are there?

According to the Ethnologue database,

there were in 2000 a total of

6,809 living languages in the world

• Naturally the different languages have distinct geographical distributions

• Distribution:

Americas: 1013Africa: 2058Asia: 2197Europe: 230Pacific:1311

• When the numbers of languages are given in such terms, it is to be assumed that the

number of speakers varies greatly

• E.g Mandarin Chinese is reported to have 874 million speakers, whereas some languages

have only a single speaker remaining

• In addition, counts are subject to questions of what counts as a (first) language and so on,

and are thus not absolute (see below)

The Ethnologue Top 10

• It was noted above that the numbers depend a lot

on how the counting is defined

• Consider e.g Arabic, one of the world’s major

‘languages’:

– Grouped together, all of the different varieties of Arabic have 219 million speakers (this would be number 4)

– However: different local varieties of Arabic are not

mutually intelligible, and are therefore counted separately – The difference between e.g Algerian Colloquial Arabic and Egyptian Colloquial Arabic is reported to be like that between e.g Spanish and Portuguese

Endangered Languages

• Many of the 6,000-odd "living" languages cited in Ethnologue are endangered or nearly extinct

• Roughly half of the world's languages are moribund , in the

sense that new generations of children are not being raised to speak them.

• Within a century, it is likely that the number of living languages will be cut at least in half, and may well be fewer than 1,000

• Thus the current rate of extinction for languages is much greater than the rate of extinction for biological species Most people believe that this loss of linguistic/cultural diversity is a bad thing.

• For languages that can't be saved, it is still possible to

document them for scientific purposes and for the sake of future generations who might want to study or even revive them.

Talking about differences

• In light of the number of languages found in the world, our hypothesis about innateness has to say something about this kind of

variation

• The idea is going to be that the variation isn’t

absolute; rather languages show fixed points

of difference

• This is illustrated in several examples of such

Basic Difference:

Sound/Meaning Connections

• One obvious point is that languages differ in

terms of how sounds are paired with meanings

• For instance, one thing we have to learn when

we learn a foreign language is what the words of that language are (obviously)

• This is just the arbitrariness of sound/meaning

connections viewed across languages

• It may be that languages have different vocabularies for different things

• This has caused some to think that the language that

we speak fundamentally affects how we think about

Interpreting this

• Given that languages are simply going

to vary in terms of their set of

sound/meaning connections; some

further questions

– What other types of variation are there?

• Variation in inventories

• Variation in e.g word-order requirements

– How much variation is there when we are looking at rules rather than inventories?

Inventory Differences

• Another way in which languages differ is in

terms of their inventories of elements

• Recall that we discussed this in our unit on phonology:

– English: 30 something phonemes

– Abkhaz: A language spoken in the Caucasus;

one dialect has c 67 consonant phonemes

– Hawaiian: smaller phoneme inventory

Inventory Differences, cont.

• Remember that we are interested in breaking down phonemes into more abstract units; features for

Inventory, cont.

• Inventory differences show up in e.g morphology

as well; consider number (recall morphology slides)

– English: Singular and Plural

• I go, we go, etc.

– Classical Greek: Dual as well:

• Lu-ei `he/she/it looses’

• Lue-ton `they-2 loose’

• Luo-usi `they loose’

– Similarly, whether or not we see discrete pieces, or

multiple adjustments to a single piece

Syntactic differences

• In syntactic typology, we see other

types of differences; some cases that

involve the order of words and phrases:

– Whether a language has a fixed word-order

or not

– What the fixed word-order of the language

is in the first place

– Whether there have to be subject and

English Word Order

• One fact that is clear about English is that major constituents occur in a fixed order:

– Subject Verb Object (SVO)

• Other orders change the meaning; put differently

– The cat chased the dog ; and

– The dog chased the cat

Describe different events altogether In English, information about the Subject and the Object requires a fixed syntactic order

• Think carefully about e.g.

– The cat, the dog chased

General Patterns

• The general pattern- one that accounts for part of the word order facts- is that in English, the heads of phrases precede the

complements of the heads

• Recall that we have phrases like XP with

head X

• In English we find [X YP], not YP X

• E.g PP: [to [the store]]; VP [eat [an apple]]

Another way of putting this

• The trees we draw for constituent structures are like mobiles

• Linear orders respect these structures: lines cannot cross

*[[the apples] eat]

Ok: [ eat [the apples]]

• The example of inversion with auxiliaries:

– Is [the unicorn that is in the garden] t eating

apples?

• In order to know which is to move to the front,

we have to know the phrase structure The

linear order does not tell us.

• In the way we think about syntax, the mobile

is important for movement and other syntactic phenomena, but in the end it has to have a

English Phrases

• The fact that the head precedes the complement

is general in English; this is called the

head-initial pattern

• In other languages, as we will see later, the

reverse pattern is found; these are head-final

patterns

• There are sporadic examples in English in which the reverse appears to be found as well:

Examples with notwithstanding notwithstanding,

English is a head-initial language

• Some languages are primarily

head-final; e.g Hindi Compare

– Rahul had read the book.

– Rahul-ne kitaab-ko paRh-aa thaa

Rahul book read AUX

• There’s a kind of “mirror-image” effect here (think trees…)

read the book

This is the English version….

the book read

This is the Hindi version Look carefully at what has changed

A puzzle

• Which “basic” orders are possible?

• What about VSO:

– Welsh:

• Lladdodd y ddraig y dyn

killed the dragon the man ‘The dragon killed the man.’

See the next lecture…

Free Word Order

• Some languages do not require major constituents to appear in a fixed order

• Such languages are sometimes

described as having free word order

• In such languages, participants in the event and subject, object etc are

identified by other means

• One language with free word order is

Mapudungun, which is spoken in Chile

and Argentina

• Here is a basic sentence:

INche pefin metawe

I see vessel

‘I see the vessel’

Word Orders

• In addition to allowing SVO sentences, all of the other possible arrangements are grammatical as well:

Agreement and Free Word