Chapter 4

1 Ethnologue:
Sentani: a language of Indionasia
Classification: east bird's head - sentani
Writing: Latin script
Dialects: east sentani
Alawa:
Location: Northern Australia
Language Status: Nearly extinct
Language use: Mainly adults
Writting: unwritten
Wals:

2. Vowel inventories.
There are strong areal patterns in the distribution of vowel quality inventories. Not surprisingly,
languages with average inventory sizes are the most widely scattered.In just a few areas, southern
Africa being one, they occur almost to the exclusion of the other two types. Small and large
inventories on the other hand are markedly skewed in their geographical distributions. Languages
with small inventories are frequent in the Americas.
Small inventories (2-4 vowels): Malagary, Greenlandic, Kabordian
Avarage (5-6 vowels): Russian, Spanish, Polish
Large (7-14): Turkish, Finish, Norwegian, English

3. Consonant inventories
Generally speaking the number of consonants is higher than the number of vowels. By implication,
the number of types in the classification is higher. We can list five types:
Small (6-14 consonants): Fasu, Sentani, Waris
Moderately small (15-18): Bai, Even
Average (22 +/- 3): Azerbaijani, German
Moderately large (26-33): Armenian, Arabic, Georgian
Large (34 or more): Lithuanian, Polish

4 Consonant-Vowel Ratio
The ratio is calculated simply by dividing the number of consonants (c) by the number of vowel
qyalities (VQ) and is referred to as the C/VQ ratio.
The languages were grouped into five categories based on dividing the range into convenient steps
below, near to, and above yhe median so as to create a histogram with approximately a normal
distribution:
- languages with a ratio equal to or below 2.0 -> low C/VQ ratio
- a ratio above 2.0 but below 2.75 -> moderately low
- a ratio of 2.75 or higher but less than 4.5 -> average
- 4.5 or higher but less than 6.5 -> moderately high
- above 6.5 -> high

Geographical distribution:
Low, moderately low -> no clustering, no noticable areas
Average -> West Africa, New Guinea, Island Asia, Central America, South Acrica
Moderately high, high -> show marked clustering, Australia, eastern and southern Acrica, North
America

5. Syllable structures
- simple syllable structure
-moderately complex syllable structure
- complex syllable structure (English)
The most common type are languages with modaretely complex syllable structure (274). This type is
widespread but is frequent in Africa, the easterly part of Asia and much of Australia.
Complex (150 languages) - Northern North America, Northern Eurasia
Simple - tend to be distributed somewhere near the eqator, in Africa, and S. America
7. Tones in Chinese:

Tones in English - there are no tones in English

8. It is moderately complex syllable structure

9. a) the minimal inventory of vowels/consnants:

Vowels: 2
Consonants: from 6 to 14
b) how many vowels/consonants form the smallest invrntory?
Vowels: 2 (Yimes - Papua New Guinea)
Consonants: 6
c) the most common vowel inventory:
5-6: Polish, Lithuenian, Spanish
d) the most typical consonant inventory:
22+/-: German, Basque, Catalan
e) the majority of languages is not of tone type

Chapter 5:
3. August von Schlegel
- affixal language (languages with affixes)
- flectional (languages with introflections)
- languages with no structure (without inflectional morphology)

4. Wilhelm von Humboldt

- flectional (relations between words in a sentence are expressed by affixes)
-isolating (lack of inflection)
- incorporative (sentence is reduced to noun form, verb and noun form one word)

5. August Schleicher
- isolating (without affixes)
- agglutinating (affixes denote single grammatical categories, are joined together one after another
with little phonological alternation)
- inflectional (use affixes, often fuse grammatical categories into one affix, this fusion may be
accompanied by phonological alternations)

7.
- I will come at noon - typical isolating language
- The niecest weekend I have ever had was in late September two years ago - synthetic
- anti-dis-establish-ment-arian-ism - polysynthetic language
English is analytic language

9.
Analytic/isolating Languages: Mandarin Chinese, Vietnamese, Cantonese, Cambodian. Gungbe,
English Features Example: Slovak:
words consist of single morphemes- mostly of a root
words are monosyllabic and monomorphemic
few derivational/ inflectional morphemes
tendency to form words by combining free morphemes into compounds
sentences consist of a series of free morphemes
relatively fixed word order
extensive use of function words
less rigid grammatical rules
the grammatical meanings of person and number in conjugation of verbs is not expressed by suffixal
morphemes, instead personal pronouns are used, which thus function as grammatical morphemes
declension is not realized by special case morphemes but by morphemes separated from lexical noun
form (father, of the father, to father, father) lack of agreement e.g in declension of possessive
syntagmas

Synthetic- inflectional
Languages: Gireek, Latin, Sanskrit, Russian, Slovak, Polish
words consist of stem and affixes affixes often mark several grammatical catcgories simultancously
(cumulation)
one inflectional morpheme functions (syncretism)
one inflectional morpheme can carry more than one set of morphological functions
primary means of building new words is by adding affixes
rich in morphological synonymy/homonymy/polysemy

Synthetic-agglutinating

Languages: Finnish, Hungarian, Estonian, Swahili, Turkish

words consist of a stem and one or more clearly identifiable affixes
addition of a large number of affixes one after another
primary means of building new words is by adding affixes
every morpheme has just one meaning
one to one relationship -one form- one meaning
vowel harmony is typical
auxiliaries are rarely used
lack of grammatical synonymy and homonymy
simple grammar, regular
possession is not expressed by special pronouns but by posssve grammatical
modal meanings are very often expressed synthetically

Polysynthetic
Languages: Chukchi, Ainu, Mohawk, Cheyenne
Features:
words consist of long strings of stems and affixes, which may tratslate as an entire English sentence
extensive use of inflection, derivation and compounding
express grammatical categories, derivational and lexical meanings in one word
noun incorporation - especially noun by verb which results in very long verbs

Introflective
Languages: Hebrew, Arabic, and other Afro-Asiatic languages Features:
Internal changes replaced by inflections
only partial agreement and gender the word consists of a consonantal skeleton usually 3 con radicals
that expresses a general basic meaning, so called primary meaning
Inserted vowel gives the word a secondary meaning
synonymy and homonymy more frequent than in agglutinating languages but less frequent than in
inflectional languages
besides the inflectional type, the most anomalous type of language Example: German Vater: Väter;
Mutter: Mütter,
English: sing-sang-sung; tooth-teeth; goose-geese