bb 172] se8entue; vedio Estimates as to the aumber of different languages in the world say coders pay because of probit e ‘ots angus" (lap 10) The pie net ae fermwbcte beneen 000 and 8a00S ogy te derailed studies, involved in comparing ‘compare them linguistics) and due to universal, Contrastive lingui: ae Cras ee ew ee ay ot Pairs or groups of them. Sometimes they erie ee te Soin he ati nag Se (cma ree ey ee ics ison of languages in order to find dissimilarities is Tt is cared out mainly ‘he name usually given to people who lock the application of linguistic principles to the field of language teaching. Ie is useful to know in advance where someone kcarning a language is likely to have difficulties, and these ofes arise in areas of the ‘target? from one's own, language which ae very dec For example it Hid nepason recy sete forthe mox part A single nega won vet which atthe end ofthe semences Pas Before the Bill hindustani nab bai, Bill Indian “Bill is not Indian, Because ofthis, Indian learners of English often have difficulties with the English and they tend to All of these per where a British Eng Preference for bringing negatives te hee Produce sentences such ast 9° ont ms don’t work, speaker would prefer: None of these pens work. Language similarities In a broad sense, similaites, since almost all nguists are Looking fr language he search for language universab one of major tasks of linguistics. Many linguists, however, study characteristics shared by groups of languages, rather than all of py Geis ae pier feceei ae tis dies oath ss Eebed the shared Pare Genetcalirbased smarts or obea lanjtags os decane Goal nomen marae foclipbeacd Sintinies are’ ae eo. comact berween neighbouring languages. And typologically-based similarities “cur when langusgs belong tothe same overall type Letts Wook w exh of tae Genetic similarities The search for genetically related languages, and the reconstruction of the hypothetical parent language from which they were descended, was considered to be the most important ‘ask of linguistics in the 19th century (Chapter 3). These days, comparative historical linguistics is a branch of historical linguistics (Chapeer 13). It enables us to follow through the development of a language from an carly stage, and to distinguish inherited features from recent innovations. Icis often noc immediately apparent which languages ae related. Av fist glance, Welsh, Spanish and Russian look quite diferent, yer these are all Indo-European languages. We need to look for Tetween the languages, cather than simatlooking words, which canbe misleading For example, ic mere chance that German, baben “have resembles Latin habere Shave’, And Turkish plac "beach" only sounds like French plage ‘beach because i was borrowed from French. On the other hand, senda doh a fo, yan er hak 08 wor dough and fiction, which can be ace back 10a Protorindo-European word meaning ‘make, mould, bul’. Two basic assumptions underlie our search for systematic correspondences. First linguistic symbols are essentially arbitra. ‘As explained in Chapter 2, there is no connection berween th sound of« word andthe thing it symbokoes except inthe case of tccasional onomatopocie words. Therefore consistent similarities bere languages which cannot be explained by borrowing may te due to common origin The second assumpaion js that sound! changes ace for the most pact regula If one sound changes, then all similar sounds in the same phonetic environment and teographical acea change. also. On the bass of these «wo Exungeloas, we may daw up relable and systematic correspondences between the various related languages, s08enBup, Guusduico‘The correspondences which al Py ich we look for can be found either in ‘the sounds, of, more reliably, in the morphology, since itis rare i (though not impossible) for one language to borrow another's ‘morphology. Figure 14.1 shows some English and Geman B | examples: =: tbat these are all words borrowed from French at the time of the ‘Norman invasion. More reliable are morphological covtespon- Alences, such as those shown in Figure 14.2. ‘igure 144 Tse gurus: wound cnetpondnces ween wth wih 3 sae oF similar meaning ae the fis ei thatthe lengua ay be felted The evence is comulatne The mare correspondences, the more likely the languages are to be related, In the German-English example above the words ae Gily ‘similar, but (as ity ae) this is not essential. For example, we can recognize the felationship beeen English and Latvon the basis ofcorespondences between word sch 3 Latin pater ‘father English father bes oot" foot Here Latin consistently corresponds co English However, corzesponde correspondences must never be acceped uneriticaly Weim be desing wth a sense food which te in development afer being borrowed. For example, there Ss supericialcorespondence beewecte French mowdon'sheep’ English mutton ‘own ‘baton’ bnttom slowon ‘hiton” lution German Nosulix A Iie! Kein ner einste schnod sehr schnliste reich richer reichste Engish Nosuiix Ay Tost small smaller ‘salost cuick auicker cuickest rich ‘enor richest figure 14.2 Such correspondences definitely prove that German and English are related, And earlier in this century, Hittite was established as fin Indo-Eutopean language on the basis of morphological Correspondence, inspite of he fact tha is vocabulary consis mainly of non-Indo-Exropean words. Building a family tree Once we have established that a number of languages are related, then we have t0 form a hypothesis as to exactly how they are linked. If we find three related or “cognate” languages, say German, English and French, then we have to decide whether they should form three separate branches from the parent, or whether (as isin fact the case) two of them diverged from one another ata later stage (Figure 14.3, p. 176) This would affect the reconstruction, because we would then have to reconstruct the ancestor of German and English before omoun oamauoo 3‘eGenéveiBazeduos 3 th Gerfranic Freie Engen figure 143 Reconstructing the parent language When we have set up a family tree, we can to reconstruct. Weedo this by looking hist of lls he ujety seen TR is, we look atthe sounds found in daughter neeges eh, Similar agm andy av 2 het hypaose sept ena ‘which the majority agree might represent fhe onal cade For example, among the Indo-tropem Tangusten ae Be Senki spt, Gre ep Latin ee, ll ing sxe is group of words sgt: that the parce lana onl ts perhaps [septa]. ee Second, ou preliminary hypothesis must be checked wo se ifthe ‘Eel we have pp a phonic pba axe astming, for camp that in Grade cea thacin Sank fl changed oa, and aie Lata ahead to [em]. Are such changes possible or likely? In this case, the ‘ower is ‘yes as far as 6] [hand el ~ fa] are concerned, bar no’ toa lem), whch i gh wala fon seen be more probable, Can we prope shag sepen On checking frthe, we discover that Grek and Sankt on sens ea of fn a td of nord neh Imus be wrong somenhee. A more Plasable panece es eternal ie ae heed once reard at the end of ish madara, in which [m] appears to be Ssh in vou mann Ts Yow ike emetimes ste i) cannery comes ee al ea so our ial reconstnction forthe word sever epee AAs we gradually build up a picture of the proto-language, we aecd alow roche mht oh ih of or Ewe of languages in genral we have reeomerusteds pose peace language. IF i looks totaly unlike any language we have ee seem then we shuld be suspic of fur ech Unreliability of reconstructions te is, unforzunately, most unlikely that we shall succeed in feconstructing an’ accurate representation of the pareat lsnguage. For a start, there are always enormous gaps in the renee availabe, e the reconsraction of Prevod Huropean, linguists rely overmuch on Greek, Lain and Sanskrit hecause ofthe extensive wetten records which have survived. Similar Written records of Albanian or Armenian might ‘iamatically ‘change the picture. Second, it is not always prasible ro deduce the actual pronunciation from written texts, Yet our reconstructions are to a large extent based on these {cats Third, no parent language is ever 2 single, homogeneous tthole, Every language has dialectal variations within it, 50 freonstructions af likely to be hotch-potch forms made up ot Sera des Fou au! seagate tndeego independent, parallel developments which can falsify the pleture ofthe parent language. If we possesed only English, Rssian and Ttallany we might wrongly deduce that Indo- European had a stree accent. But stress developed independenty in all thre languages ater the break-up of the parent lenguage, Fifth, borrowing from neighbours can distort the pierre In conclusion, we realize that reconstructions merely represent the best guesses we can rake about the parent langlage in the light of current Knowledge. No one nowadays has the camfidence of the ‘I9th-century scholar ‘who attempted t0 translate one of Aesop fables into Proto-Indo-European! ‘Above all, they provide a convenient summary of posible inherited feature: so allowing linguists to. distinguish long: standing characteristics from recent innovetions, Linguistic areas ‘hen sina age found between accent langue, so called Should be suspected as a possible source. Cegulger eh ome ane const wih ane enter oer take cover some of the linguistic features of their neighbours. Borrowed vocabulary items are particularly common: English has adopted numerous French food words: courgettes, anbergines, pité, for example. Borrowing of constructions is ‘nore likely to occur iFthe languages are strucrrally similae. But ‘ven dissimilar languages can, over time, gradually absorb ‘seBenue; Buvedofeatures from one another. If some particularly striking characteristic has spread over a wide range, linguists sometimes talk about ‘The reason for studying areal characteristics is twofold: on the cone hand, knowledge of how languages can aflect one another extends our understanding of language change. On the other hhand, it is important to isolate shared features caused by borrowing, so. as not to confuse chem wich genetic and typological similarities. ‘Areal features can involve any aspect of the language, For example, Chinese, Thal and Vietnamese are all spoken inthe Far East, and they are all cone languages, something which has apparently come about through contact. And in. India, languages wth guite different origins have all developed a particular type of sound, known a8 a“retrofiex’, in which the tongue is curled backwards against the palate Several Balkan languages show similarities which appear ro be duc to proximity. Albanian, Bulgarian and Romanian all have the so-called “definite article’ she attached after the noun. For example, Romanian has rmuate-le “mouncain-the’y a onstruction which has clearly been borrowed from its neighbours, since languages to which i is more closely related show the reverse orden, as in the historically related French ‘sjuvalene fe mont ‘the moun’. The same three languages, as wells another neighbour, modern Greek, all say the equivalent of: ‘Give me that I eat, when one might have expected them to say ‘Give me to eat, judging from other European languages. ‘These particular features seem to have spread during. the centuries when Byzantine culture was a unilying force in this pat ofthe work. Features which are borrowed from another language seep in slowly. This has led to a search for wider ranging, more ancient hocrowings. Linguistic characteristics shared ver more extensive parts of the plobe might shed light on prehistoric population movements, an approach known as snopmlation ‘ypolony For example, some languages distinguish between two types of we, inclusive we which indicates the people inthe conversation, and exclusive we, which does not: Yesterday we (inclusive) arrived. = Land others present. ‘Yesterday ive (exclusive) arrived. ~ Land others not present. Mardy say European languages have this dsinction, quite alot tut and ean Anan ones fae and yo do most Austan inputs This sugges that & might be avery old feature LIMES spread sey weatvaed inthe Coare of ces Language types Paalll structures in languages may occu because the languages are of a similar type. Just as one can divide human beings into “ferent racial types on the basis of characteristics such as bone Striceure skin colour, blood group and s0 on, 90 one can divide languages inco different groups. The resent intrest Magnistiypolopy as vse in part ont of the failure t0 find Large numbers of language universal. Absolute universals, characteristics shared by all languages, proved to be hard co identify, and those attempring so lst ther vere driven back onto vague statements such as: ‘All languages Ihave the means of asking questions". When people tried to pin these statements down farther, such as querying bow questions were asked, it became clear that certain devices recurted in iruman languages, though different languages favoured diferent constractions. (6f course, the observation that different languages use different constructions is by no means new. What is new, is the recent interest in and implicarional tendencies. Wi pastas one can say that, fan animal has feathers and a beak itis also likely to have wings, 30,one can make statements of the type: ‘If a language has a basic pattern of subject, verb, object, it is also likely to have prepositions (rather than postpositions)". Morphological criteria for language classification \What criteria should form the basis for language classification? ‘There is Considerable controversy about this. The earliest work ‘on the topic, inthe 19th century, was based on the way in which ‘mogphemes were handled. ‘The number of morphemes per word varies from language to language ~ s0 does the way in which morpheres are combined ‘cobendvey Suuecu00 3 tl160 | ‘seBensue; uveduio> within werd: In the 18th century, scholars ced 10 use sch criteria for diving languages ico deren og atleast three diferent morphological eypen ne? Re ‘@awinolaing (or analytical) Langvage is one in which words equently consist of one morpheme. This is often the case in English Will you please let the dog out now. language (from the Latin word for. ‘gue together isonet whch words can bedded into marth without diffeulty. Turkish and. Swahili are wellincy examples. But agglination is also used to a nicl xce English: a4 easels lovingly faith falness AsfasionaVlanguag> is one such as Latin which fses morphemes together in such a way that they are not easly recoymcnioe se feparate elemens. Foc example, on the end of all indicates that itis masculine, singula, and the subee’ of she sentence, but these three aspects cannot be diventarglen Occasional examples of fusion becur in Enlishe 7 tonto gy pa fed puss eigen Rt nets lle «Gu setae neta carl, Gr ad a we Beep yes este ips od Sea re TANS om ae a Tencahatune a2 arinmee tee skp hte cea en out he evolve the race-horse or the Jersey cow.’ i ai de langage he feo oui hoe igen 4 elena mined cree am any op hare Word order criteria lng ses word order a Bass syncai device. Hingis tecminology, itis a (Chapter 7). Pethaps (ort cba tee teeta ner usoeat oct a word order a5 a typological characters. Among the possible ‘word orders only a limited number are commonly used, and each Dt these is likely to possess certain predictable characterises. The most usual preliminary classification isin terms of subject, verb, object In theory, cere ate six possbiliies: Subject first Verb first Object first Sov so ovs svo vos cosy. In practice, the ones on the left (subject frst) are considerably ‘ore common than the ones inthe mille (ver fist), whereas the ones on the ight (object frst) are extremely rae. Th fact, no sire example of OSV has ever heen found, and the few examples of OVS are clustered together m South Ammeica, texamples of languages which fir each of these eypes, with che Titra order in which they would expres a senitace The dog filled the duck are: SOV. The dog the duck killed (Turkish). SVO The dog killed the duck (English). VSO Killed the deg the duck (We'sh VOS Killed the duck the dog (Malagasy (Madagascan) OVS. The duck killed the dog (Hixkaryana (S. America). OSV The duck the dog killed ? Apurina (S. Amerca)- ‘This preliminary classification is useful, bur it also presets Some probes The most abwios dificty that» numer of Tanguages do not fit easily into one of these categories for various reasons. In some languages, such as the Australian languages Dyichal and Walbizi it scams wo be impossible 1 identify a “basic word order. These appear to be genuine non configurational languages: their word order is extremely fee land flesble. In other languages, the word order seems to be fixed, bur mixed. For eeample, German has SVO oie in main clauses, but SOV in subordinate claaacs Ie says in effect The dog killed the duck (SVO, main clause), I hoard that ithe dog the duck Killed] (SOY, subordinate clause).seomnun umduos B Furthermore, in several languages, it is extremely difficule to identify the Subject’ of the verb. Take the sentences: The dog killed the duck, The dog ran away. In English, the dog would be regarded as the subject of both these sentences, But in some languages, such as Inuit, an Eskimo language, the dick inthe frst sentence would be given the same inflectional ending as the dog in the second sentence. Situations Such as this make it difficult to make reliable decisions about what isa ‘subject’, and what is an ‘object’. The rationale behind the Inuit siruation (somewhat simplified) is that there is a standard ending put on most nouns, but this is changed ia cases where there are tio nouns in a sensence, in which ease the more active participant, the ‘agent’, is given a special ending In addition, so-called pro-drop languages cause problems. These are languages which can omit pronouns, usually the subject pronoun. In Latin, for example, cans 'sing.T* was commoner than x6 cand 'I sing-T, where the pronoun was added only if extra emphasis was needed. In these languages, the order of verb and ‘object when the pronoun is dropped is not necessarily the samme as that of verb and object when S, V, O are all present, ‘These problems show that word order classifications are not cntirely trustworthy. However, statistically, certain probabilities emerge. For example: an SVO language is likely to have auxiliaries preceding the verb, prepositions rather than postpositions, and genitives following the nou, whereas att SOV language is likely to have auxiliary verbs alter the veth, Postpositions rather tan prepositions, and genitives preced; ‘the noun, The English examples on the left would be likely t0 be represented in an SOV language by the order on the right: SVG, Riles potatoes, SOV Bilpoatoes eas AUXV Marigold can go. VAUX — Mangold go cana PREP On. POSTP Saturday om. NGEN Queen of Sheba, GENN O'Shea pen Because language is always changing, there are very few lncages wc te some «pte cxample of the stausieal probabilities. Mose langage hae oe ieonssteoces, and ne dowIE (lube pws), English for example can say Sbobat queot os wel os sreen Sheba. el ower lit of satis! probabil i only fist age in Se" werking ‘out of language types The accord, and More Enporae ie soi ot ry ths probeblie cx Tas °Sal under ecusion, and there may be several interacting Cxplanatons. One suggestion ie that in languages there 8 ‘SomeWhot smioly tone another: the man mord-or head in 3° ree i tke be-in-a- simile pesition-thoughout-the- A For example, if'a verb normaly oxcus at the beginning of the verb phase, asin English eats peanuts, then a preposition is likely to be at the front of it Parase, 26 in on Sarurday, and an adjective at the front of its Dic nee esa a hot ate a in ther ofthe family. Interesting, the conchusion Ei egos baie 0 Sooner tor ae et aes independently by theoretical linguists trying to describe sentence patterns (X-bar syntax, Chapter 7). : nplcaional probabilities can also, with a certain amount of Exton he aid to reonact babe aie ae 33 Supplement to other yes of Teconstrucion in, historical linguistics (Chaprer 13). we fon ce of ay ol as ‘nich had vebs after objets and ostpostions, then we woul Tote astouey ras cca kay thaw ene preceding nouns or example At the momen, chere i ill an enormous amount moze tobe dine ia ration to typologies characteris for classiins issue andthe eng mplasona dosh, Recent Roti and his followers have starred ro tke a ners n i type of work. Some of these ideas will be discussed in Chapter, : Questions 1 What is contrastive linguistics? | 2 Suggest three reasons why languages might show similar, 38 How might one recognize genetically related languages? 4 What is the purpose of reconstructing a proto-engusge? 5 What are implicational universals? 6 Which basic word orders are the commonest among the work's lngueges? seBenbu Boueatuco & bl