Kurdish
IE:Indo-Iranian - Iraq/Turkey

Turkic and Semitic Languages

LING 1020 - Will Styler

The review sheet for the midterm is online!

• One of the long-answer questions will be on the test!

  • I eliminated two last night. It’s just 6 now.

Today’s Agenda

• Morphological Type

  • Isolating vs. Synthetic

  • Agglutinating vs. Fusional

• Turkic Languages!

• Semitic Languages!

Morphological Type

Morphology

The study of how words are put together

Morphological Type

A means of categorizing how languages put words together

We care about two “dimensions”:

• Do words have lots of morphemes or few?

• If they have multiple morphemes, do they blend together, or are they easy to pick apart?

Do words have lots of morphemes or few?

• If words have few morphemes (like English or Chinese), they’re “isolating”

• If they have many (like Spanish or German), they’re “synthetic”

  • Languages where whole sentences are single words are sometimes called “polysynthetic”

English
IE:Germanic - All over

I did see the cat on the street, he’s cute.

1sg did see DEF cat on DEF street 3sg-be.3sg cute.

• Only one morpheme in most words! This is Isolating!

Spanish
IE:Italic - All over

Esta escribiéndomelo

be.3sg write-GER-1sg.DAT-3sg.MASC

‘He/she is writing it to me.’

• Lots of morphemes per word! This is Synthetic!

Wichita
Caddoan - Oklahoma

Kiyakiicíwa:cé:hirʔasʔirhawi

‘There was the big buffalo lying there.’

• Uh… yeah. This is polysynthetic!

In a synthetic language, do the morphemes blend together, or are they easy to pick apart?

• If they’re glued together loosely, it’s “agglutinating”

• If they merge inseparably, it’s “fusional”.

Turkish
Turkic - Turkey

• Those add together cleanly, and pick back apart. We’re agglutinating!

German
IE:Germanic - Germany

Donaudampfschifffahrtselektrizitätenhauptbetriebswerkbauunterbeamtengesellschaft

Donau-dampf-schiff-fahrts-elektrizitäten-haupt-betriebs-werk-bau-unter-beamten-gesellschaft

Danube-steam-ship-transport’s-electricities-head-operation’s-work-building-under-officials-association

• Look at those clean lines! Agglutinative!

Russian
IE:Slavic - Russian

Ti uhodila co mnoi

Ti u-hodi-la co mnoi

2sg.NOM away-go.IMPERF-past.FEM with 1sg.INST

“You left with me”

• Uh-oh! Those morphemes mean lots of things! Russian’s Fusional!

Spanish
IE:Italic - All over

Durmiéramos

Durmiéramos

Sleep.2pl.SUBJ.PAST.IMPERFECT

• Whoa. All that is one morpheme? No easy lines? Fusion drives engaged!

Why does Robin Thicke prefer agglutinating languages?

• Because he hates blurred lines.

  • (Not because he’s creepy and misogynistic)

Both “agglutinating” and “fusional” are types of “synthetic”

• Neither term applies to highly isolating languages

  • “How do you string together morphemes in languages which don’t string morphemes together?”

It’s always a continuum

• English is isolating, but Mandarin is more isolating

  • Same with Synthetic: Nobody’s besting Wichita, but we don’t hold it against them.

• Most languages do some fusion and some agglutination

  • We call a language fusional or agglutinating when it becomes a habit

Morphological Type - Review!

Thanks, SpecGram!

### Morphological Type - Review!

Thanks, SpecGram!

Morphological Type - Review!

Thanks, SpecGram!

Morphological Type - Review!

• If a language has few morphemes per word, it’s isolating

• If the language has multiple morphemes per word, it’s synthetic

• If a synthetic language has easy-to-pick-apart morphemes, it’s agglutinating

• If a synthetic language has blended or combined morphemes, it’s fusional

Maratha halatar sallabeorn nsaah

Mara-tha hala-tar sal-la-beorn nsa-ah

hamster-ERG drug.dealer-ABS report-PAST-3SG NSA-DAT

“The Hamster reported the drug dealer to the NSA”

This language is:

1. Isolating

2. Synthetic, Aggulatinating

3. Synthetic, Fusional

yesika kan yer pikula faret rundi Michael Bay

yesika kan yer pikula faret rundi Michael Bay

Jessica watch yesterday movie ruined from Michael Bay

“Jessica watched a movie which Michael Bay ruined”

This language is:

1. Isolating

2. Synthetic, Aggulatinating

3. Synthetic, Fusional

harestats T-Rex prostatimfibulartha

hare-stats T-Rex prostat-im-fibul-artha

google-3sg.inanimate.past.IMP T-Rex.NOM prosthetic-PL-ARM.inanimate-extend.3PL.Inanimate.ACC

“The T-Rex googled”Prosthetic Arm Extensions””

This language is:

1. Isolating

2. Synthetic, Aggulatinating

3. Synthetic, Fusional

Speaking of heavily agglutinating…

Turkic Languages!

They’re not just Turkish!

Turkic

• Turkic is one of the top-level language families

  • (Although we’re thinking it’s grouped with Mongolic, Tungusic, Koreanic, Japonic under Altaic)

• ~35 Turkic languages, depending where you draw the line

• Over 200 million speakers of Turkic

  • Turkish has the most speakers, followed by Azeri, Uzbek, Kazakh, and Uyghur

Features of Turkic Languages

• Agglutinative Morphology

• SOV order

• No grammatical gender

• Evidentials!

• Vowel Harmony!

Aggultinative Morphology

Been there, done that…

Got the Agglutinating T-Shirt!

(as opposed to the fusional t-shirt)

SOV Order!

No grammatical gender at all!

• (Unlike the surrounding languages)

Evidentiality Marking

Describes the speaker’s knowledge of the topic under discussion

There are different ways to code Evidentiality

• Inferentiality (“I know it” vs. “I inferred it”)

  • (This is what the Turkic languages are doing)

• Evidentiality (direct vs. circumstantial vs. hearsay vs. assumption)

  • (Some languages have a different morpheme for each)

Turkish
Turkic - Turkey

• ‘gel-di’ “He came”

• ‘gel-miş’ “He came, to the best of my knowledge”

Vowel Harmony

When vowels change to match the other vowels in the word

Tukish has back-front vowel harmony

• This means that vowels in a word must be either all back or all front

—

Turkish
Turkic - Turkey

Türkiye’dir - ‘it is Turkey’

• kapidir - ‘it is the door’

• gündür - ‘it is day’

• paltodur -‘it is the coat’

• The vowel in the last syllable changes depending on the other vowels!

Let’s hear some Turkic Languages!

Uyghur
Turkic - China

The Uyghurs are trying to separate from China

• (China’s trying very hard to stop this)

(Tuvans don’t always do that, but throat-singing is just too cool not to show)

I have no idea how to smoothly transition into…

Semitic Languages!

Semitic Languages

• Maybe top-level, maybe “Afroasiatic”

• Widely spoken (~475 million speakers!)

Semitic Languages

• Arabic (all dialects) - 300 million speakers

• Amharic (Ethiopia) - 21 million

• Hebrew (Israel) - 7 million

• Tigrinya (Ethiopia) - 6.5 million

• Aramaic (Middle East) - 550,000

Features of Semitic

• Case

• Emphatic Consonants

• Templatic Morphology

Case

Semitic languages usually have NOM, ACC, and Genitive

Emphatic Consonants

Consonants produced with a secondary pharyngeal articulation in the back of the mouth

“I’m not even going to try and pronounce these” - Will

Arabic
Semitic - All over

تين (figs) - طين (mud)

سور (fence) - صور (Tyre, city in Lebanon)

ذل (humiliation) - ظل (shadow)

(or watch this video)

Templatic Morphology!

Templatic Morphology

Words are formed by inserting and replacing sounds into different parts of the word

Arabic
Semitic - All over

k_t_b = “book”

Arabic
Semitic - All over

k_t_v = “write”

Templatic Morphology

• Word roots are “incomplete”, and are turned into words by filling in the blanks

• Words sharing a set of consonants (root) will have similar meanings

• All Semitic languages use templatic morphology

  • If you find a language doing this, it’s likely Semitic

You come upon a language which displays Templatic Morphology. ‘Jeleb’ means “Duck”. ‘Jalob’ means “To quack”. ‘Julab’ likely means…

1. Paper Towel
2. Communism
3. Goose
4. Basket
5. Sunglasses

So, about those Semitic Languages…

Hebrew

• Died as a spoken language in 1st to 4th Centuries CE

• Survived only as a liturgical language in Judaism

• Resurrected (rebuilt, reconstructed) in the 19th Century

• Now has around 7 million speakers

  • One of Israel’s official languages

  • (World’s most popular ConLang?)

• Hebrew has a particularly famous speaker…

• Borat’s “Kazakh” is actually Hebrew

… and maybe Jesus

(Hebrew was a holy language, so although Jesus likely knew Hebrew, he likely seldom spoke it)

Arabic

• Around 300 million speakers around the world

• Many different dialects

Arabic

Around 300 million speakers around the world

Many different dialects

• All are written using the Arabic script

  • Written Right-to-left

English

All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood.

Arabic

يولد جميع الناس أحراراً متساوين في الكرامة والحقوق، وقد وهبوا عقلاً وضميراً وعليهم أن يعامل بعضهم بعضاً بروح الإخاء.1

Arabic too has a particularly well known speaker

The Prophet Muhammad spoke Arabic

• … and Arabic is the language of the Quran

Aramaic
Semitic - Ethiopia

• Around since ~500 BCE

  • Used by the Neo-Assyrians, Neo-Babylonians, Achaemenids

• Language of the books of Daniel and Ezra

• Used in the Dead Sea Scrolls (although Jewish Aramaic is different)

• Modern Aramaic is still spoken (although it’s endangered)

• Aramaic has a particularly famous speaker

(Although he probably also spoke Hebrew, Koine Greek, and maybe Latin)

“The Passion of the Christ”

• Mel Gibson’s 2004 “the Passion of the Christ” is done mostly in “Aramaic”

• This is reconstructed old Aramaic, with blanks filled in from 4th Century Aramaic

  • So, Jesus might understand what they were saying in that movie

… and a less well-known Semitic language!

Amharic
Semitic - Ethiopia

Amharic

• Spoken by 25 million people in Ethiopia

• Uses ejectives instead of emphatic consonants

• Considered a sacred language by Rastafarians

  • ‘Ras’ is an Amharic Honorific, and ‘Tafari’ is the founder’s born name

• It has an awesome writing system too!

Wrapping up!

• We classify languages by morphological type

  • Isolating vs. Synthetic

  • Agglutinating vs. Fusional

• Turkic Languages are awesome

  • Know their features

• Semitic Languages are also awesome

  • Know their features, too!

In Recitation: Watch languages evolve before your very eyes!

Next time: Nilo-Saharan Languages!

Pereltsvaig Ch. 6.1

This has changed on the schedule!

Thank you!

http://savethevowels.org/world/slides/lotw_9.html