Linguistic typology Part 1: Review and Introductory Notions

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
articulation

– In addition, the way that linguistic objects (speech sounds,
morphemes, words) function in combination provides
evidence for the abstract structures and rules employed by
speakers (although of course without their explicit
knowledge)


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
to human language?


Plan
• Review some facts about languages of
the world
• Examine different areas in which
languages differ
• Talk about the nature of such
differences


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


Geography
• Distribution:
  

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

Pacific:1311


Comments
• 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
•

Top 10:

1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
10.

Language n(million)
Mandarin Chinese 874
English
341
Spanish 322-358
Bengali
207
Hindi
181
Portuguese
176
Russian 167
Japanese 125
German
100
Korean
78


Counting
• 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
differences in this and the following lecture

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)
• Examples:
English
Dog
Cat
Tree

German
Hund
Katze
Baum


Differences
• 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
or categorize reality
• This is the so-called Whorfian Hypothesis: language

determines thought
• This hypothesis has been largely discredited, as
discussed in various places


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
– Place of articulation
– Manner of articulation
– Voicing; etc.
• The idea in this type of variation is that a restricted
inventory defined in these terms is in principle
available, and that specific languages make specific
choices from that inventory.


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’
– Lihir (Oceanic)
• Wa `you’
• Gol `you-2’
• Gotol `you-3’
• Gohet `you-PAUCAL’
• Go `you-PL’


Further differences
• When it comes to morphology and syntax, we see

another way in which languages differ
• With morphology:
– What is expressed ‘in a word’ differs greatly from
language to language
– Similarly, whether or not we see discrete pieces, or
multiple adjustments to a single piece

• With syntax:
– how trees are linearized (where the head of the phrase
is)
– Fixed vs. free word order


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
object Noun Phrases in the first place


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
•
V
eat

VP
NP
N
apples

*[[the apples] eat]
Ok: [ eat [the apples]]

• Later we’ll see languages that have this tree
structure, but a different order for the elements


Remember
• 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
linear order