Workshop 2

1.Language families
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O--tCr2CAU8&ab_channel=VirtualGalia
What are six major language families?

Design Features
Task 2. Based on two articles fill in the table
https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Hockett's_design_features
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Signature=30dc9799431b61bfc37b98955d31fb6ad90e71bb841e19c22c85e6c8cd2c4271

Feature Explanation
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12

Task 3. Language diversity

The number of languages spoken in the world today is a bit more than 7 000. To
understand how diverse the world is in terms of languages, analyze the maps and
charts, visualized by The Washington Post (source).
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2015/04/23/the worlds-
languages-in-7-maps-and-charts/
Some languages are more communicative powerful than others, many languages are
endangered and have just a dozen of native speakers, though.

A. Read the text on the given site, choose the appropriate words of comparison to make
the sentences true.

1. Chinese has more/less native speakers than any other language, followed by Hindi
and Urdu, which have the same linguistic origins in northern India.
2. The number for Portuguese is smaller/bigger than other sources suggest because not
all Brazilians are native speakers.
3. Overall, more/less people learn English than French, Spanish, Italian, Japanese,
German and Chinese combined.
4. At least financially, German is worth twice as much/less as French and nearly three
times as much/less as Spanish, for instance.
5. Some might also be surprised that Korean or Punjabi do not show up on the list:
Indeed, both are nearly as widely/locally spoken as Italian.

B. Answer the questions:

1. Are all continents equally diverse in the number of spoken languages?
2. What languages take the lead in terms of native speakers?
3. Is the amount of languages growing or declining in the world in general?
4. What is the most studied foreign language nowadays?
5. Do you share the UNESCO estimates about the future of languages?

C. Define the statements as true or false.

1. Two-thirds of the world's population share only 6 native languages.
2. According to the article English is spoken by 4.85 percent of the
world's population. 3. United States is a linguistically diverse country.
4. Among all popular languages spoken in many countries Indo-European languages
take the lead. 5. About 3 percent of the world's population accounts for 96 percent of
all languages spoken today. 6. Out of all languages in the world, 2,500 have fewer than
1,000 native speakers. 7. In the United States, endangered languages are primarily
located along the East coast, as well as in reservations of indigenous people in this
region.

Task 4. Indo-European Languages

A. Watch video “The Indo-European connection”, answer the
questions below:
1. What is a branch of a language?
2. When and where Indo-European language was first spoken?
Does it have any Ukrainian connection?
3. What is a cognate word?
4. Can we know for sure what Proto Indo-European language was?
5. What sound alternations can be traced in the Indo-European languages? Give
examples. 6. What are morphological differences of the Indo-European
languages (case, plurality, etc.).

B. Find the equivalents of the Ukrainian words in the given languages. Complete the
table with your examples, comment on similarities and differences you observe.
Ukrainian Polish English German Latin

терен
яблуко
фрукт
яйце
сіль
сім‘я
ягня
вовк
миша
Task 5. Watch the video “Basque: a language of mystery”.
A. Useful vocabulary from the video:
_______________________________________________________________
_______________________________________________________________
_______________________________________________________________
_______________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________
___________

B. Answer the questions:

1. Where is Basque language used?
2. How many people speak it?
3. Does it have any status? If yes, where?
4. What are the hypotheses of Basque origin?
5. Which factors led to its isolation?
6. Is Basque language homogeneous?
7. What makes the Basque language unique? State external and internal
factors.
8. Explain the essence of ergative / absolutive cases; exemplify it by the
Basques language.

C. Have you ever travelled to a foreign country the language you don’t know? Has the
knowledge of other languages helped you to understand the local environment and to
communicate successfully? Based on your own experience, what connotations of your
language helped you to understand or get your message across? Give examples.

Task 6. Language variation

A. Analyze the information about the architecture of language and dimensions of
variations. Fill in the table below:
https://www.christianlehmann.eu/ling/variation/dimensions_of_variation.html
Dimension Examples in the English Examples in the Ukrainian
language language

Diaphasic
(stylistic
variation: formal
vs. informal
register (style)

Diamesic
(stylistic
variation:
spoken vs.
written
language)

Diastratic
(social
variation:
students’
jargon,
 military
jargon,
youth language)

Diatopic
(geographic
variation:
Cockney,
Geordie,
Bavarian
German)

Diachronic
(chronological
variation:
extinct,
obsolete, old
fashioned,
current, newly
coined
expressions)

Design features of human language

Task 7.A. (SKIP) Watch the video Human language and animal
communication systems The video focuses on three design features that
distinguish human language from animal communication – discrete infinity
(creativity / productivity), displacement, and joint attention. In the book
Aitchison, J. (2010). Aitchison's linguistics, pp. 14-28 you will find some other
features: duality, arbitrariness, the need for learning, patterning, and structure-
dependence.

Group all these features into those concerned with the (a) language form? (b) language
meaning, (c) language function, and (d) language acquisition. Briefly describe each of the
features.

Language form:
1.
____________________________________________________________________________
____________________________________________________________________________
2.___________________________________________________________________________
____________________________________________________________________________
3.
____________________________________________________________________________
____________________________________________________________________________
4.___________________________________________________________________________
____________________________________________________________________________
5.
____________________________________________________________________________
____________________________________________________________________________
Language meaning:
6.
____________________________________________________________________________
____________________________________________________________________________
Language function:
7.
____________________________________________________________________________
____________________________________________________________________________
Language acquisition
8.___________________________________________________________________________
____________________________________________________________________________

B. Some of the design features (but not all of them in a set) may be also partially attributed to
animals. Work in two groups. Arrange a debate between proponents and opponents of human
language uniqueness.

Jalan, M. (2021). Whay aren't animals talk like humans? Science ABC,
https://www.scienceabc.com/eyeopeners/why-cant-animals-talk-like- humans.html

Fill in the table . Based on all the previous material and (Jalan, M. (2021). Whay aren't animals
talk like humans? Science ABC, https://www.scienceabc.com/eyeopeners/why-cant-animals-talk-
like- humans.html
) you have learned find out the difference between human speech and animal communication.
Find some more examples of animal “talking” that is usually typical only for humans
Speech Communication

Examples