Languages of the World - Caucasian and Dravidian

<lang>Georgian</lang><br><ldata>Kartvelian - Georgia</ldata>

Dzvali - Kabu
 
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# Caucasian and Dravidian Languages
### LING 1020 - Will Styler

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### Administrative Notes

* I've tweaked the schedule.  Grab the latest copy

* No due-dates have changed, but the readings have.

* Niloo's lecture is online now.

* Will's office hours today end at 1pm

* 1:30, if you're willing to talk while in line at the Alferd Packer grill
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## Today's Agenda

* Ergative/Absolutive Systems

* Caucasian Languages

* Dravidian Languages

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# Case!

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### Today, we're wrapping up the idea of "case".

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(Here's a touch of review, just in case)

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### Case marks grammatical relations

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Fundamentally, we need to know:

* ### Who did the action?

* ### Who was directly affected by the action?

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In linguistics, we break those into three "roles":

* **Subject** (of an intransitive sentence)

* **Agent** (of a transitive sentence)

* **Object** (of a transitive sentence)

* (This is as complex as we'll get in this class)

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### Languages group these roles differently in their case systems

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"Let's mark Subject and Agent using the same morpheme!"

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This is called a "Nominative/Accusative" system

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### Nominative/Accusative Systems

* Group S and A together
	* The same case markers are used for S and A

* Subjects *and* agents are nominative!

* "I slept", "I saw her"

* "*Me slept", "*Me saw her"

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"No, let's mark Subject and **object** using the same morpheme!"

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This is called a "Ergative/Absolutive" system

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The case marker that marks S and O is called *Absolutive Case*

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The case marker that marks A is called *Ergative Case*

<small>(Think "Erg-" as "work", as in "Ergonomics" or "Energy")</small>

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### Ergative/Absolutive Systems

* Group S and O together
	* The same case markers are used for S and O

* Subjects *and* objects are absolutive!

* Erg/Abs is less common than Nom-Acc

* Ergative/Absolutive is found in specific areas

* Caucasian languages, Tibetan, Australian languages, Basque, some Iranian languages, some American Indian languages, 
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### "Ergative" and "Absolutive" *replace* Nominative and Accusative Cases

* You'll never have a "Nominative" or "Accusative" case in a truly Erg/Abs system

* You'll never have an "Ergative" or "Absolutive" case in a truly Nom/Acc system

* (Some languages do switch around, like Nepali)

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<lang>Basque</lang><br><ldata>Isolate - "Spain"</ldata>

* Jon etorri dira.

* Jon-ABS come AUX
* *"Jon came."*

* Nekanek Jon ikusi ditu.

* Nekane-ERG Jon-ABS seen AUX
* *"Nekane saw Jon"*

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* Jon etorri dira. - "Jon came."

* Nekane-k Jon ikusi ditu. - "Nekane saw Jon."

* **S = Unmarked**
* **O = Unmarked**
* **A = -k**

* *Absolutive Case* = Unmarked
* *Ergative Case* = -k

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<lang>Georgian</lang><br><ldata>Kartvelian - Georgia</ldata>

*bitʃ‘-ma dzaghl-i bagh-ʃi damala.*

boy-erg dog-abs garden-dat.in hid.aor

‘The boy hid the dog in the garden.’

*dzaghl-i bagh-ʃi daimala.*

dog-abs garden-dat.in hid.aor

‘The dog hid in the garden.’

* **S and O = -i** (absolutive case)
* **A = -ma** (ergative case)

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### This is tea from Georgia

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# Ergativi-tea!

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*In an Ergative/Absolutive language, which case markers would be used for the sentences:*

***"Will needlessly dissed Michael Bay. Kevin laughed."***

a) Will = ERG, Michael Bay = ABS, Kevin = ABS

b) Will = ABS, Michael Bay = ERG, Kevin = ERG

c) Will = ERG, Michael Bay = ABS, Kevin = ERG

d) Will = ABS, Michael Bay = ERG, Kevin = ABS

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*In an Ergative/Absolutive language, which case markers would be used for the sentences:*

***"Michael Bay misrepresented Optimus Prime. Will cried."***

a) Michael Bay = ERG, Optimus = ABS, Will = ABS

b) Michael Bay = ABS, Optimus = ERG, Will = ERG

c) Michael Bay = ERG, Optimus = ABS, Will = ERG

d) Michael Bay = ABS, Optimus = ERG, Will = ABS

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### ... and of course, they don't have to group, or the groupings can change.

* (Remember Nepali?)

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This is called "Split ergativity"

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**Nepali** - Ergative/Absolutive for *animate* subjects

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**Nepali** - Nominative/Accusative for *inanimate* subjects

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**Hindi/Urdu** - Ergative/Absolutive in the past

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**Hindi/Urdu** - Nominative/Accusative in the present

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We don't use consistent case names in these situations

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### This is Nepali tea

* ## Split Ergativi-tea!

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(Sorry)

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### So, there are three ways to do Case

* Nominative/Accusative - Groups S and A

* Ergative/Absolutive - Groups S and O

* Split Ergative - No grouping, or variable grouping

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## Yay!  We're done learning how case works!

<small>Although we'll keep touching on small variations from time to time...</small>

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Speaking of Ergative languages...

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# Caucasian Languages!

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### There are three macro-families that linguists mean when we say "Caucasian"

* **Northwest Caucasian** - Kabardian, Abaza, Abkhaz

* **Northeast Caucasian** - Chechen, Lezgic

* Some folks classify these as North Caucasian, with "West" and "East" branches

* **Kartvelian** (or "South Caucasian") - Georgian, Svan, Zan

* We can't yet trace any higher-level families for these languages

* (but we *really* want to)

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### The Caucasus is a "language area"

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### Language Area

An area where languages which are not known to be related all share some features.

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### Features of Caucasian Languages

* Ergativity!

* Agglutinative morphology

* Ejectives and lots of consonants!

* Relatively few vowels 😢

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## Ergativity!

* ...been there, done that, got the t-shirt

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* # (It's an ergativi-tee!!!)

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## Agglutinative morphology

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### Agglutinative morphology

When a language sticks lots of morphemes together to make very complex words, *without changing the morphemes*

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### Agglutinative

Think "glue", you're just sticking moprhemes together!

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<lang>Turkish</lang><br><ldata>Turkic - Turkey</ldata>

<small>Thanks [Dr. C. George Boeree](http://webspace.ship.edu/cgboer/morphology.html)!</small>

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## Ejectives, and *tons* of consonants!

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<lang>Abkhaz</lang><br><ldata>NW Caucasian - Georgia/Russia</ldata>

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## Disappointingly small vowel systems

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<lang>Abkhaz</lang><br><ldata>NW Caucasian - Georgia/Russia</ldata>

<center>
<style type="text/css">
.tg  {border-collapse:collapse;border-spacing:0;}
.tg td{font-family:Arial, sans-serif;font-size:14px;padding:10px 5px;border-style:solid;border-width:1px;overflow:hidden;word-break:normal;}
.tg th{font-family:Arial, sans-serif;font-size:14px;font-weight:normal;padding:10px 5px;border-style:solid;border-width:1px;overflow:hidden;word-break:normal;}
</style>
<table class="tg">
  <tr>
    <th class="tg-031e">High</th>
    <th class="tg-031e">ɨ</th>
  </tr>
  <tr>
    <td class="tg-031e">Low</td>
    <td class="tg-031e">ə</td>
  </tr>
</table>
</center>

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**This is a recurring pattern: Lots of consonants, few vowels, and vice versa**

<small>This gets into information and coding theory, which gets awesome, quickly</small>

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# About those languages...

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## Kartvelian

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### Kartvelian

* Georgian (around 4.5m speakers)

* Mingrelian (around 500k speakers)

* Laz (around 200k speakers)

* Svan (around 40k speakers)

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<lang>Georgian</lang><br><ldata>Kartvelian - Georgia</ldata>

* Vowel heavy for a caucasian language

* (... still only 5 of them...)

* Official language of Georgia

* Really awesome writing system

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### One very infamous speaker

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### Joseph Stalin

* Born as "იოსებ ბესარიონის ძე ჯუღაშვილი" in Gori, Georgia

* ([iɔsɛb bɛsɑriɔnis dzɛ dʒuɣɑʃvili])

* Changed his name to "Iosif Vissarionovich Stalin"

* Stalin = Russian word for "Steel" + "-in", made of.

* Lenin = Russian word for "Iron" + "-in", made of.

* Never quite mastered the Russian language

* Killed between 34-49 *million* people with his policies

* Likely killed by his interior minister

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## Northwest Caucasian

(Red = Adyghe/Kabardian, Orange = Abhaz/Abaza)

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### Northwest Caucasian

* Adyghe (around 500k speakers)

* Kabardian (around 1.6m speakers)

* These two are often called "Circassian" together

* Abkhaz (around 100k speakers)

* Abaza (around 50k speakers)

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<lang>Abkhaz</lang><br><ldata>NW Caucasian - Russia/Georgia</ldata>

## Northeast Caucasian

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### Northeast Caucasian

* Chechen (around 1.3m speakers)

* Avar (around 700k speakers)

* Lezgi (around 500k speakers)

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<lang>Chechen</lang><br><ldata>NE Caucasian - Chechnya (Russia)</ldata>

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# Speaking of lots of consonants...

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## Dravidian Languages!

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### Remember this map?

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### Dravidian Languages

* A top-level language family

* Proto-Dravidian has been proposed as the language of the Indus River Civilization

* (... but not confirmed)

* Spoken by ~21% of India's population

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### Major Dravidian Languages

* Telugu - 85m speakers

* Tamil - 70m speakers

* Kannada - 49m speakers

* Malayalam - 38m speakers

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### Features of Dravidian

* Agglutinative Morphology

* SOV

* Grammatical Gender!

* Past/Non-Past tense system

* Lots of small sound distinctions!

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### Oh, and awesome writing systems!

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## Small sound distinctions?

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<lang>Malayalam</lang><br><ldata>Dravidian - India</ldata>

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<lang>Malayalam</lang><br><ldata>Dravidian - India</ldata>

* (again, lots of consonants mean fewer vowels needed!)

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<lang>Malayalam</lang><br><ldata>Dravidian - India</ldata>

<lang>Telugu</lang><br><ldata>Dravidian - India</ldata>

## Wrapping up

* Ergative languages group S and O

* Caucasian languages are awesome

* You should know their features.

* Dravidian languages are awesome

* You should know their features, too!

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## Next time: Turkic and Semitic Languages!

<correct>Pereltsvaig Ch. 5</correct>

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<huge>Thank you!</huge>

http://savethevowels.org/world/slides/lotw_8.html