# Language Families! ### Will Styler - LIGN 101 --- ### Today's Plan * Languages and Dialects * What are language families? * How can languages be related? How can we tell? - What are some of the major families? - Are all languages related? --- # Languages vs. Dialects --- ### How can we tell if people are speaking two dialects of the same language, or two different languages? --- ### This one's kind of tough! --- ## "Speakers understand each other!" --- ### Mutual Intelligibility When two people can understand each other when talking. --- ### Mutual Intelligibility! * English speakers understand English speakers * Russian speakers understand Russian speakers * Russian speakers *don't* understand English speakers --- ### This sounds promising! --- ### Dialect Continuum A geographical continuum of speakers where nearby speakers understand each other, but distant speakers might not. ---
[Image Credit](http://mapsontheweb.zoom-maps.com/image/59579538144)
--- ### Mutual Intelligibility * Moroccan Arabic speakers don't understand Egyptian Arabic speakers * (Unless they write the message down) * Ukrainian speakers understand Russian speakers (and vice versa) - But Ukrainian speakers understand Belorussian speakers better still * Swedish, Danish and Norwegian speakers all understand each other * Brazilian Portuguese speakers understand Spanish better than the other way around * ("Asymmetrical Mutual Intelligiblity") * Do speakers of Amish English understand rural New Zealand speakers? --- ### OK, so what else? --- ## "They use the same writing system!" --- ### Shared Writing Systems * Literate English speakers use the same writing system! * (... the same one as Tagalog, Romanian, Vietnamese) * Russian and Mongolian both use Cyrillic * Moroccan and Yemeni Arabic have a writing system in common, but little else. --- ## "Speakers agree they're speaking the same language!" ---
Serbo-Croatian
IE:SW-Slavic - The Balkans
---
Serbo-Croatian
IE:SW-Slavic - The Balkans
* Also known as "Serbo-Croat" or "BCS" * Spoken in Bosnia & Herzegovina, Serbia, Croatia, and Montenegro * Up until the 1990s, there were four dialects, one for Bosnia, Serbia, Croatia, and Montenegro * Yugoslavia broke apart, wars started, people were massacred * Now they’re four different languages spoken by four different peoples in four different countries ---
--- ### So we have... - Different Dialects which could be languages, but are dialects - (Moroccan and Egyptian Arabic) - Languages which could be dialects, but are languages - (BCS, or Hindi and Urdu) - Different Languages where speakers understand each other - (Swedish, Norwegian, and Danish) ---
--- ### So what *really* makes a language different from a dialect? --- ## *“A language is a dialect with an Army and a Navy”*
Popularized by Max Weinreich
--- **Calling something a language or a dialect is a political choice, not a linguistic one** * If you want to unite yourself with a group, they’re speaking a dialect of your language * If you want to distance yourself from a group, they’re speaking another language * *... but we still have to describe the linguistic relationship!* --- # Language Families --- ## Language Families are all about patterns ---
English
German
Dutch
Swedish
Turkish
Father
Vater
Vader
Far
Baba
Fish
Fisch
Vis
Fisk
Balik
Eat
Essen
Eten
äta
yemek
Have
Haben
Hebben
Ha
Var
*
Are some of these languages related?
--- ### Mother Language The original language from which a set of other languages developed --- ### Sister Languages Languages which share a single mother ---
English
German
Dutch
Swedish
Turkish
Father
Vater
Vader
Far
Baba
Fish
Fisch
Vis
Fisk
Balik
Eat
Essen
Eten
äta
yemek
Have
Haben
Hebben
Ha
Var
* **Sister Languages** - English, German, Dutch, Swedish * **Mother Language** - Proto-Germanic! --- # How can we figure out these relations? --- ## "Will, how are baby languages made?" --- ### Well, when speakers love a language very much... * Speakers of a language inhabit a wide area * Groups of speakers become geographically or culturally isolated * The languages changes naturally, but *differently for each group*! * Let a few hundred years pass, and bam, languages. --- ## Case in point: Latin!
--- ### Step 1: Conquer vast Empire, make everybody speak Latin
--- ### Step 2: Screw said Empire up
--- ### Step 3: Daughter Languages!
--- ### The Romance Languages The Daughters (and grand-daughters) of Latin
--- ## What are the signs that languages are related? --- ### Geography Nearby people often speak related languages
... but not always!
---
---
English
IE:Germanic - Everywhere
---
French
IE:Italic - Also everywhere
---
Breton
IE:Celtic - Brittany
--- ### Actual human genetics! Researchers have used genetic studies to *support* hypotheses about linguistic and cultural connections --- ### Cognates Words which sound similar across different languages ---
English
German
Dutch
Swedish
Turkish
Father
Vater
Vader
Far
Baba
Fish
Fisch
Vis
Fisk
Balik
Eat
Essen
Eten
äta
yemek
Have
Haben
Hebben
Ha
Var
---
English
French
Italian
Spanish
Portuguese
zero
zéro
zero
cero
zero
one
un
uno
uno
um / uma
two
deux
due
dos
dois / duas
three
trois
tre
tres
três
four
quatre
quattro
cuatro
quatro
--- ### Sound Correspondences Where one sound in one language systematically corresponds with another sound in another language ---
English
German
Dutch
Swedish
Turkish
Father
Vater
Vader
Far
Baba
Fish
Fisch
Vis
Fisk
Balik
Have
Haben
Hebben
Ha
Var
* **/f/ and /v/** * **/v/ and /b/** --- ### Sound correspondences * We look for common *patterns* of correspondence * Sounds will change based on how they're produced * /d, n, l/ will often change around * (as in the Dakota, Lakota, and Nakota languages) * Systematic sound correspondence with cognates is a slam-dunk case for language relation --- ### Shared linguistic features If a bunch of languages do things in a certain way, they may be related. * Five languages nearby with a Vocative case? Prolly related. * 8 languages with tone, surrounded by languages without tone? It's a solid bet. --- If you have a few of these things, shared among some languages, you may have a... --- ### Language Family A group of languages which share a common ancestor ---
--- ### Language Families in the News
[Image source](https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0135820) --- ## How do we find deeper language ancestry? --- ### Finding language ancestry * 1: Find related languages * 2: Reconstruct the mother tongue! --- ### Language Reconstruction The process of looking at daughter languages and guessing what structures, sounds, and words the mother language must have had. * An art, not a science --- ### We do this all the time!
--- ### Reconstructing words * 1: Find cognates * 2: Reverse sound changes * 3: Note borrowings * 4: When all else fails, go with the most common form in the daughters --- ### Reconstructing grammar * 1: Look at the grammatical patterns and structures present * 2: Find the ones that are shared among the languages * 3: Pick a shared pattern or structure * 4: For those that lack (or have) the pattern or structure, try and explain why * (Maybe influence from another language, or a conflicting pattern) * 5: Assume that structures present in a majority of daughters were also present in the mother ---
Proto-Indo-European
Indo-European - ???
* *wem-, *h₁reug- - 'to vomit' * *wāt-, *weh₁- - 'to blow' * *pneu- - 'to breathe' * *(s)mei- - 'to laugh' * *ǵhasto-, *ǵhazdho- - 'stick' * (According to Watkins 2000) --- ### What's the Catch?
***Reconstruction assumes regularity!***
--- ### Reconstruction will fail if... * Sounds changed unpredictably * "Ooh, I like /ɠ/, let's use that!" * Change happened for non-predictable reasons * "We got rid of that verb form because it sounds too much like "Michael Bay", and did you see what he did to the Transformers franchise?" * Coincidence * If more languages got rid of an earlier structure than kept it, we may pretend it's a new thing * *... and we may never know if it's failed!* --- ### ... but it's still our best chance! * So, when we're looking into relations between languages... --- ### Finding language ancestry * 1: Find related languages * 2: Reconstruct the mother tongue! * 3: Then, compare that to other mother languages. * 4: Then, the mothers' mothers... * 5: If they have words, features, or structures in common, you've got a family! ---
### Which of the following information **does not** help us to find language relations? A) Geography B) Sound correspondences C) Shared Writing Systems D) Cognate words E) DNA and Genetic Testing ---
### Which of the following information **does not** help us to find language relations? A) Geography B) Sound correspondences
C) Shared Writing Systems
D) Cognate words E) DNA and Genetic Testing --- # What are some of the major language families? --- ## Indo-European (~3.2 Billion Speakers)
--- ## Indo-European (~3.2 Billion Speakers)
--- ## Sino-Tibetan (~1.4 Billion Speakers) - Includes Chinese, Burmese, Tibetan
--- ## Niger-Congo Languages (~519 Million Speakers) - Includes Swahili, Igbo, Fula, Zulu, and Zarma
--- ## Afroasiatic Languages (~500 Million Speakers) - Includes Arabic, Hausa, Oromo, Amharic, Somali, Hebrew
--- ## Austronesian Languages (~386 Million Speakers) - Includes Malay, Tagalog, Malagasy, Cham, Hawaiian, Maori
--- ### That's just the top five ... there are many, MANY more language families --- ## Language Families of Indigenous America
--- ## Language Families of Amazonas
--- ## Language Families of the Caucasus
--- Wow... that's a lot of language families! - ### Do all languages have relatives? --- # Do all languages have relatives? --- ### Yes, but we don't always know what they are! --- ## Linguistic Isolates Languages where we have found no contemporary relatives or ancestors --- ### Basque
--- ### Other well-known(ish) isolates * Ainu (spoken in Japan) * Karok (spoken in California) * Korean (spoken in Korea) * Natchez (spoken in MS/LA, now OK) * Zuni (spoken in New Mexico) --- # ... but aren't all languages related? --- ### "Proto Human"/"Proto World" The postulated human mother-tongue --- ### Proto-World is mostly the domain of crackpots
--- ### Proto-World - This requires reconstructing based on reconstruction - No written records have been found to exist - lol. - This makes the assumption that humans only developed language once! --- ### Wrapping Up * 'Language' vs. 'Dialect' is political, not linguistic * Dialects of a 'mother language' which grow apart become 'daughter languages' * This begets 'language families' * We find these relations by looking for cognates, sound correspondences, shared features, and by doing reconstruction * We can't always find relatives for languages. ---
Thank you!