According to rough estimates, there are over two and a half thousand languages on the globe; The difficulty of determining the number of languages is primarily due to the fact that in many cases, due to insufficient knowledge, it is not clear whether it is an independent language or a dialect of a language. There are languages that serve a narrow circle of speakers (tribal languages of Africa, Polynesia, American Indians, “one-village” languages of Dagestan); other languages represent nationalities and nations, but are associated only with a given nationality (for example, the Dungan language in Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan, the Mansi or Vogul language in the northern Trans-Urals) or nation (for example, the languages Czech, Polish, Bulgarian); still others serve multiple nations (e.g., Portuguese in Portugal and Brazil, French in France, Belgium, and Switzerland, English in England and the United States, German in Germany and Austria, Spanish in Spain and 20 South and Central American republics) .
There are international languages in which materials of international associations are published; UN, Peace Committee, etc. (Russian, English, French, Spanish, Chinese, Arabic); The Russian language, although it serves one nation, is an interethnic language for the peoples of the former USSR and one of the few international languages in the whole world.
There are also languages that should be considered dead in comparison with modern languages, but under certain conditions they are still used today; This is primarily Latin - the language of the Catholic Church, science, nomenclature and international terminology; This also includes, to one degree or another, ancient Greek and classical Arabic.
Linguistics knows two approaches to the classification of languages: grouping languages according to the commonality of linguistic material (roots, affixes, words), and thereby according to the common origin - this is a genealogical classification of languages, and grouping languages according to the commonality of structure and type, primarily grammatical, regardless of origin is a typological, or, otherwise, morphological, classification of languages.
The genealogical classification of languages is directly related to the historical fate of languages and peoples, speakers of these languages, and covers primarily lexical and phonetic comparisons, and then grammatical ones; morphological classification is associated with a structural-systemic understanding of language and is based mainly on grammar.
The results of almost two centuries of research into languages using the method of comparative historical linguistics are summarized in a scheme for the genealogical classification of languages.
Families of languages are divided into branches, groups, subgroups, and sub-subgroups of related languages. Each stage of fragmentation unites languages that are closer than the previous, more general one. Thus, East Slavic languages show greater closeness than Slavic languages in general, and Slavic languages show greater closeness than Indo-European languages.
GENEALOGICAL CLASSIFICATION OF LANGUAGES
I. INDO-EUROPEAN LANGUAGES
Indian group
(over 96 living languages in total)
Hindi and Urdu are two varieties of one modern Indian literary language. And also Bengali, Sindhi, Nepali, Gypsy.
Dead: Vedic, Sanskrit.
Iranian group
(more than 10 languages, the greatest affinity is with the Indian group,
with which it unites into a common Indo-Iranian, or Aryan, group)
Persian, Dari, Tajik, Ossetian, etc.
Dead: Old Persian, Avestan, etc.
Slavic group
A. Eastern subgroup
P u s k i y Ukrainian Belarusian
B. Southern subgroup
Bulgarian Macedonian Serbo-Croatian
Slovenian
Dead: Old Church Slavonic.
B. Western subgroup
Czech Slovak Polish etc.
Dead: Pomeranian dialects.
Baltic group
Lithuanian Latvian Latgalian
Dead: Prussky et al.
German group
A. North Germanic (Scandinavian) subgroup
1) Danish 2) Swedish
3) Norwegian 4) Icelandic 5) Faroese
B. West German subgroup
6) English
7) Dutch (Dutch) with Flemish
8) Frisian
9) German; two adverbs; Low German (northern, Niederdeutsch or Plattdeutsch) and High German (southern, Hochdeutsch); The literary language developed on the basis of South German dialects.
B. East German subgroup
Dead: Gothic, Burgundian, Vandal, etc.
Roman group
French, Provençal, Italian, Sardinian, Spanish, Portuguese, Romanian, Moldavian, Macedonian-Romanian, etc.
Dead:: Latin.
Celtic group
Irish, Scottish, Breton and others. etc.
Dead: Manx
Greek group
Modern Greek, from the 12th century. Dead: Ancient Greek, 10th century. BC e.
Albanian group
Albanian
Armenian group
Armenian
Hittite-Luwian (Anatolian) group
Dead: Hittite, Carian, etc.
Tocharian group
Dead: Tocharian
P. CAUCASIAN LANGUAGES
A. Western group: Abkhaz-Adyghe languages
Abkhazian, Adyghe, Kabardian, Ubykh, etc.
B. Eastern group: Nakh-Dagestan languages
Chechen, Ingush, Lezgin, Mingrelian, Georgian, etc.
III. OUTSIDE THE BASQUE LANGUAGE
IV. URAL LANGUAGES
FINNO-UGRIAN (FINNIAN-UGRIAN) LANGUAGES
A. Ugric branch
Hungarian, Mansi, Khanty
B. Baltic-Finnish branch
Finnish, Estonian, Karelian, etc.
B. Perm branch
Komi-Zyryan, Komi-Permyak, Udmurt
G. Volga branch
Mari, Mordovian
SAMODYAN LANGUAGES
Nenets, Enets, etc.
V. ALTAI LANGUAGES
TURKIC LANGUAGES
Turkish, Azerbaijani, Turkmen, Uzbek, Crimean Tatar, Tatar, Yakut, Kazakh, Kyrgyz, etc.
MONGOLIAN LANGUAGES
Mongolian, Buryat, Kalmyk.
TUNGU-MANCHU LANGUAGES
Evenki, Manchu, Nanai, etc.
NOT PART OF ANY GROUPS
(presumably close to Altai) Japanese, Korean, Ainu.
VI. AFRASIAN (SEMITO-HAMITIC) LANGUAGES
Semitic branch
Arabic, Assyrian, etc.
Dead: Hebrew.
Egyptian branch
Dead: Ancient Egyptian, Coptic
Berber-Libyan branch
(North Africa and West Central Africa) Ghadames, Kabyle, etc.
Cushitic branch
(North-East and East Africa) Agave, Somali, Saho, etc.
Chadian branch
(Central Africa and West-Central Sub-Saharan Africa)
Hausa, Gwandara, etc.
VII. NIGERO-CONGO LANGUAGES
(territory of sub-Saharan Africa)
1. Mande languages(bamana, etc.)
2 Atlantic languages(fura, diola, etc.)
3. Kru languages(kru, seme, etc.) and other groups (10 in total)
VIII. NILO-SAHARAN LANGUAGES
(Central Africa) Songhai, fur, mimi, etc.
IX. KHOISAN LANGUAGES
(in South Africa, Namibia, Angola)
Bushman languages (Kung, Auni, Hadza, etc.), Hottentot languages.
X. Sino-TIBETAN LANGUAGES
Chinese branch: Chinese, Dungan.
Tibeto-Burman branch: Tibetan, Burmese.
XI. THAI LANGUAGES
Thai, Laotian, etc.
XII. LANGUAGES MIA – YaO
These are the little-studied languages of Central and Southern China: Yao, Miao, well.
XIII. DRAVIDIAN LANGUAGES
(languages of the ancient population of the Indian subcontinent)
Tamil, Telugu, etc.
XIV. OUTSIDE THE FAMILY - THE LANGUAGE OF BURUSHASDI
(mountainous areas of northwestern India)
XV. AUSTROASIATIC LANGUAGES
Nicobar, Vietnamese, etc.
XVI. AUSTRONESIAN (MALAYAN-POLYNESIAN) LANGUAGES
A. Indonesian branch
Indonesian, Madurese, Tagalog (Tagalog).
B. Polynesian branch
Tongan, Maori, Hawaiian, etc.
B. Micronesian branch
Marshallsky, Truk, etc.
XVII. AUSTRALIAN LANGUAGES
Many minor indigenous languages of central and northern Australia, most famously a p an t a.
XVIII. PAPUA LANGUAGES
Languages of the central part of the island. New Guinea and some smaller islands in the Pacific Ocean. A very complex and not definitively established classification.
XIX. PALEOASIATIC LANGUAGES
Chukchi-Kamchatka languages
Chukotka, Koryak, Eskimo, Aleutian, etc.
XX. INDIAN (AMERINDIAN) LANGUAGES
Language families of North America
1) Algonquian (Menominee, Yurok, Cree, etc.).
2) Iroquois (Cherokee, Seneca, etc.).
3) Penutian (Chinook, Klamak, etc.), etc.
Germanic and Romance languages: areas of distribution and distinctive features.
Germanic languages
Among the Indo-European languages, Germanic languages rank first in terms of the number of people speaking them (over 400 million people out of 1,600 million speakers of various Indo-European languages). Modern Germanic languages include:
1. English, spoken in the UK, USA, Australia, New Zealand. In these countries it is the national language, the language of the vast majority of the population. In Canada, English is one of two official languages, along with French, and English-Canadians make up over 40% of the population. In the Republic of South Africa, English is also one of the official languages, along with Afrikaans (Boer). English was forcibly introduced as the language of colonial rule and was the official language in the former colonies and dominions of England, where along with it there were local languages of the main population of these countries. With their liberation from British rule, the English language lost its dominant position and was gradually replaced by local languages. English is spoken by about 400 million people.
2. The German language is spoken in Germany, Austria, northern and central Switzerland, Luxembourg, and in France - Alsace and Lorraine. It is also common in some other areas in Europe and the USA. German is spoken by about 100 million people.
3. Dutch (Dutch) language - the language of the population of the Netherlands and Flanders, uniting the northern provinces of Belgium;
The Dutch language has some distribution in the USA and the West Indies. Dutch is spoken by more than 19 million people.
4. Afrikaans (Boer) - the language of the descendants of the Dutch colonists, one of the two official languages of South Africa (the second official language of South Africa is English). It is spoken by about 3.5 million people.
5. Yiddish is a modern Jewish language. Distributed in various countries among the Jewish population.
6. Frisian is not an independent national language; it is spoken by the people of the Frisian Islands, the northern coast of the Netherlands and a small district in northwestern Germany. Frisian is spoken by over 400 thousand people.
The languages listed above are West German subgroup. TO North Germanic (Scandinavian) subgroup The following languages include: 1. Icelandic is the language of the population of Iceland (about 270,000 people). 2. Norwegian is the language of the population of Norway (about 4.2 million people). 3. Faroese is the language of the population of the Faroe Islands (about 50,000 people). 4. Swedish is the language of the population of Sweden (about 8 million people) and part of the population of Finland (about 300 thousand people). 5. Danish is the language of the population of Denmark (over 5 million people); Danish is also spoken in Greenland and the Faroe Islands. Scandinavian languages - Swedish, Norwegian, and Danish - are common in some US states and Canada among emigrants from Scandinavian countries.
English developed from Anglo-Saxon, German from Old High German with Lower Saxon subsequently being drawn into its orbit as Low German, Dutch (with Flemish in Belgium) from Old Low Frankish, Afrikaans from Dutch, Yiddish developed on the basis of High German, as did Swiss and Luxembourgish; the Scandinavian languages (Swedish, Danish, Norwegian, and from the latter Icelandic and Faroese) arose from the Old Norse.
Distinctive features of the Germanic languages:
in phonetics: dynamic stress on the first (root) syllable; reduction of unstressed syllables; assimilative variation of vowels, which led to historical alternations in umlaut (by row) and refraction (by degree of rise); common Germanic consonant movement;
in morphology: widespread use of ablaut in inflection and word formation; formation (next to a strong preterite) of a weak preterite using a dental suffix; distinguishing between strong and weak declensions of adjectives; manifestation of a tendency towards analyticalism;
in word formation: the special role of nominal compounding (stem compounding); the prevalence of suffixation in nominal word production and prefixation in verbal word production; the presence of conversion (especially in English);
in syntax: tendency to fix word order;
in vocabulary: layers of native Indo-European and common Germanic, borrowings from Celtic languages, Latin, Greek, French.
The presence already in ancient times, in addition to general innovations, phonetic and morphological differences between groups of languages; numerous isoglosses between Scandinavian and Gothic, Scandinavian and West Germanic, Gothic and West Germanic, indicating historical connections in different eras.
Romance languages
The Romance group unites the languages that emerged from Latin:
Aromanian (Aromunian),
Galician,
Gascony,
Dalmatian (extinct at the end of the 19th century),
Spanish,
Istro-Romanian,
Italian,
Catalan,
Ladino (language of the Jews of Spain),
Megleno-Romanian (Meglenitic),
Moldavian,
Portuguese,
Provençal (Occitan),
Romansh; they include:
Swiss, or Western, Romansh / Grisons / Courvalian / Romansh, represented by at least two varieties - Surselvsky / Obwaldsky and Upper Engadine languages, sometimes subdivided into a larger number of languages;
Tyrolean, or Central, Romansh/Ladin/Dolomite/Trentino and
Friulian/Eastern Romansh, often classified as a separate group,
Romanian,
Sardinian (Sardinian),
Franco-Provençal,
French.
Literary languages have their own variants: French - in Belgium, Switzerland, Canada; Spanish - in Latin America, Portuguese - in Brazil. More than 10 creole languages arose from French, Portuguese, and Spanish.
In Spain and Latin American countries, these languages are often called neo-Latin. The total number of speakers is about 580 million people. More than 60 countries use Romance languages as national or official languages.
Areas of distribution of Romance languages:
“Old Romania”: Italy, Portugal, almost all of Spain, France, southern Belgium, western and southern Switzerland, the main territory of Romania, almost all of Moldova, isolated inclusions in northern Greece, southern and northwestern Yugoslavia;
“New Romania”: part of North America (Quebec in Canada, Mexico), almost all of Central America and South America, most of the Antilles;
Countries that were former colonies, where Romance languages (French, Spanish, Portuguese), without displacing local ones, became official - almost all of Africa, small territories in South Asia and Oceania.
The classification of Romance languages encounters difficulties due to the diversity and gradual transitions from language to language. In practice, the geographical principle is often used. Subgroups are distinguished: Ibero-Roman (Portuguese, Galician, Spanish, Catalan), Gallo-Roman (French, Provençal), Italo-Roman (Italian, Sardinian), Rhaeto-Roman, Balkan-Roman (Romanian, Moldavian, Aromanian, Megleno-Romanian, Istro-Romanian) . A division is also proposed, taking into account some structural features, into the languages of “continuous Romagna” (Italian, Occitan, Catalan, Spanish, Galician, Portuguese), an “internal” language (the most archaic in structure is Sardinian), “external” languages, with a large number innovations and those most influenced by foreign languages (French, Romansh, Balkan-Romance). The languages of “continuous Romania” to the greatest extent reflect the general Romance language type.
Main features of Romance languages:
in phonetics: rejection of quantitative differences in vowels; the general Romance system has 7 vowels (the greatest preservation in Italian); development of specific vowels (nasals in French and Portuguese, labialized front vowels in French, Provençal, Romansh; mixed vowels in Balkan-Romanian); formation of diphthongs; reduction of unstressed vowels (especially final ones); neutralization of openness/closedness e And O in unstressed syllables; simplification and transformation of consonant groups; the emergence as a result of palatalization of affricates, which in some languages became fricatives; weakening or reduction of the intervocalic consonant; weakening and reduction of the consonant in the outcome of the syllable; a tendency towards open syllables and limited compatibility of consonants; a tendency to phonetically link words in the speech stream (especially in French);
in morphology: preservation of inflection with a strong tendency towards analyticism; the name has 2 numbers, 2 genders, no case category (except for Balkan-Roman ones), transfer of object relations by prepositions; variety of article forms; preservation of the case system for pronouns; agreement of adjectives with names in gender and number; forming adverbs from adjectives using a suffix -mente(except Balkan-Romanian); an extensive system of analytical verb forms; the typical Romance verb scheme contains 16 tenses and 4 moods; 2 pledges; peculiar non-personal forms;
in syntax: word order is fixed in some cases; the adjective usually follows the noun; determiners precede the verb (except for Balkan-Romance ones).
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Linguistics deals not only with the study of the world's languages, but also with their classification. Classification of languages is the distribution of the world's languages into groups based on certain characteristics, in accordance with the principles underlying the study.
There are different classifications of languages. The main ones are:
- - genealogical (genetic), based on the concept of linguistic kinship;
- - typological (morphological), based on the concept of structural similarity of languages;
- - geographical (areal).
Genealogical classification is based on the concept of linguistic kinship, and typological classification is based on the concept of similarity of languages.
The purpose of the genealogical classification of languages is to determine the place of a particular language in the circle of related languages and to establish its genetic connections. The main method of research is comparative-historical, the main classification category is the family of languages (also branch, group, subgroup).
The purpose of the typological classification of languages is to establish language types at different levels - phonetic, morphological, syntactic.
Related languages are the subject of study in comparative historical linguistics. The relationship of languages is manifested in their systematic material similarity, i.e. in the similarity of the material from which the exponents of morphemes and words that are identical or similar in meaning are constructed. For example, other ind. Kas tava sunus? and lit. Kas tavo sunus? Such similarities cannot be accidental. It testifies to the relationship of languages. The presence of common morphemes indicates the common origin of languages.
Relatedness of languages is the material proximity of two or more languages, manifested in sound and content similarity and linguistic elements of different levels - words, roots, morphemes, grammatical forms, etc. Related languages are characterized by material closeness inherited from the era of their linguistic unity.
Genetic study of languages is the study of languages from the point of view of their origin: the presence/absence of kinship or greater/less kinship. Recognition of the kinship of languages assumes that related languages are “descendants” of one common language (proto-language, base language). The collective of people who spoke this language, in a certain era, disintegrated due to certain historical reasons, and each part of the collective, under conditions of independent isolated development, changed its language “in its own way,” as a result of which independent languages were formed.
The greater or lesser degree of kinship depends on how long ago the separation of languages occurred. The longer the languages developed independently, the further they “moved” from each other, the more distant the kinship between them.
Over the centuries, related languages have undergone significant changes. As a result, these languages have far more differences than similarities.
The phonetic appearance of words changes. Phonetic changes are systematic, natural in nature, and as a result, strict phonetic correspondences are observed. For example, lat. matches in it. [h]: caput (head) - Haupt; cornu (horn) - Horn; collis (neck) - Hals. The fact of the presence of a system of regular sound correspondences is the most conclusive in establishing the relationship of languages. Sound correspondences reflect the regular nature of sound transformations of linguistic units.
Related languages that have one common “ancestor” form a language family. For example, the Indo-European family of languages has an Indo-European base language as its base language, which broke up into dialects, gradually turning into independent languages related to each other. The Indo-European proto-language is not recorded in written monuments. The words and forms of this language can only presumably (hypothetically) be restored (reconstructed) by scientists based on a comparison of related languages. The restored form is the protoform, the archetype. It is marked with * (asterisk), for example: * nevos- prototype for words: English. new, lat. novus, tazh. nav, German neu, Arm. nor, Russian new. linguistics kinship genealogical typological
To recreate the ancient appearance of this word, the most rational option is to choose the Greek and Latin forms, which allow us to reconstruct the *nevos archetype. When comparing words and forms, preference is always given to languages of an older formation.
The material similarities between languages are not always obvious. Sometimes words that are very different in sound are connected by regular complex phonetic correspondences and, therefore, are genetically identical, for example, Russian. child and German Kind(k>h).
Comparison of related languages is carried out using the comparative historical method.
Reliable evidence of the relationship of languages is common grammatical forms. They, as a rule, are not borrowed when languages come into contact.
In most cases, we are not talking about complete comparability, but about regular correspondences in the phonemic composition of morphemes with similar semantics.
It is necessary to strive to ensure that the comparisons cover the maximum number of words and a wide range of languages.
The most productive and methodologically correct is not a direct comparison of morphemes of languages, but the construction of hypothetical ancestral forms: if we assume that these languages are related, then for each series of semantically related morphemes of these languages there should have been a primordial form in the base language to which they all go back. Therefore, it is necessary to show that there are rules according to which the transition from some proto-form to all existing mophemes in these languages can be explained. So, instead of directly comparing Russian ber- and its analogues in other languages, it is assumed that in the Proto-Indo-European language there was a form * bher, which, according to certain laws, passed into all forms attested in descendant languages.
The comparative historical method uses the technique of reconstruction. Reconstruction is a set of techniques and procedures for recreating unattested linguistic states, forms, phenomena by historical comparison of the corresponding units of a separate language, group or family of languages.
The main meaning of the reconstruction is the most adequate and consistent disclosure of the phased development and historical changes of particular subsystems and the system as a whole of languages dating back to one ancestor.
Some linguistic phenomena of a common base language may persist in one group of related languages, but may disappear in another. Preserved linguistic phenomena - relics - make it possible to restore the original picture of the ancestor language. The absence of such relics makes the work of comparativists difficult.
Those linguistic phenomena that appear in the language later are called innovations.
In recent decades, a new method has been used to determine the degree of relationship between languages, which allows, through the use of special calculations, to determine how long ago certain languages diverged. This is the method of glottochronology, proposed by the American linguist M. Swadesh. The glottochronology method is based on the following assumptions. In the vocabulary of each language there is a layer that makes up the so-called basic vocabulary. The vocabulary of the main dictionary is used to express simple, necessary concepts. These words should be represented in all languages. They are least susceptible to change in the course of history. The main dictionary is updated very slowly. The speed of this update is constant for all languages. This fact is used in glottochronology. It has been established that the vocabulary of the main dictionary is replaced at a rate of 19-20% per millennium, i.e. out of every 100 words of the main vocabulary, approximately 80 are preserved after a millennium. This was established by calculations based on the material of languages that have a long attested history.
For glottochronological studies, the most important part of the basic vocabulary is used. They take 200 units - 100 basic, or diagnostic, and 100 additional. The main lexical units include words such as hand, leg, moon, rain, smoke, in the additional dictionary - words such as bad, lip, bottom.
For that. to determine the time of divergence of two languages, lists of 200 words in the main dictionary should be compiled for each of them, i.e. give the equivalents of these words in these languages. Then it is necessary to find out how many pairs of semantically identical words from two such lists can be considered related, connected by regular phonetic correspondences. lists, we get double the word divergence time.
Consider the origin of languages: at one time the number of languages was small. These were the so-called “proto-languages”. Over time, proto-languages began to spread across the Earth, each of them becoming the ancestor of its own language family. A language family is the largest unit of classification of a language (peoples and ethnic groups) based on their linguistic relationship.
Further, the ancestors of language families split into linguistic groups of languages. Languages that are descended from the same language family (that is, descended from a single “protolanguage”) are called a “language group.” Languages of the same language group retain many common roots, have similar grammatical structure, phonetic and lexical similarities. There are now more than 7,000 languages from more than 100 language families of languages.
Linguists have identified more than one hundred major language families of languages. It is assumed that language families are not related to each other, although there is a hypothesis about the common origin of all languages from a single language. The main language families are listed below.
| Family of languages | Number languages |
Total carriers language |
% from the population Earth |
|---|---|---|---|
| Indo-European | > 400 languages | 2 500 000 000 | 45,72 |
| Sino-Tibetan | ~300 languages | 1 200 000 000 | 21,95 |
| Altai | 60 | 380 000 000 | 6,95 |
| Austronesian | > 1000 languages | 300 000 000 | 5,48 |
| Austroasiatic | 150 | 261 000 000 | 4,77 |
| Afroasiatic | 253 000 000 | 4,63 | |
| Dravidian | 85 | 200 000 000 | 3,66 |
| Japanese (Japanese-Ryukyus) | 4 | 141 000 000 | 2,58 |
| Korean | 78 000 000 | 1,42 | |
| Tai-kadai | 63 000 000 | 1,15 | |
| Ural | 24 000 000 | 0,44 | |
| Others | 28 100 000 | 0,5 |
As can be seen from the list, ~45% of the world's population speaks languages of the Indo-European family of languages.
Language groups of languages.
Further, the ancestors of language families split into linguistic groups of languages. Languages that are descended from the same language family (that is, descended from a single “protolanguage”) are called a “language group.” Languages of the same language group have many similarities in word roots, grammatical structure and phonetics. There is also a smaller division of groups into subgroups.
The Indo-European family of languages is the most widespread language family in the world. The number of speakers of languages of the Indo-European family exceeds 2.5 billion people who live on all inhabited continents of the Earth. The languages of the Indo-European family arose as a result of the consistent collapse of the Indo-European proto-language, which began about 6 thousand years ago. Thus, all languages of the Indo-European family descend from a single Proto-Indo-European language.
The Indo-European family includes 16 groups, including 3 dead groups. Each group of languages can be divided into subgroups and languages. The table below does not indicate smaller divisions into subgroups, and there are also no dead languages and groups.
| Indo-European family of languages | |
|---|---|
| Language groups | Incoming languages |
| Armenian | Armenian language (Eastern Armenian, Western Armenian) |
| Baltic | Latvian, Lithuanian |
| German | Frisian languages (West Frisian, East Frisian, North Frisian languages), English language, Scots (English-Scots), Dutch, Low German, German, Hebrew language (Yiddish), Icelandic language, Faroese language, Danish language, Norwegian language (Landsmål, Bokmål, Nynorsk), Swedish language (Swedish dialect in Finland, Skåne dialect), Gutnian |
| Greek | Modern Greek, Tsakonian, Italo-Romanian |
| Dardskaya | Glangali, Kalasha, Kashmiri, Kho, Kohistani, Pashai, Phalura, Torvali, Sheena, Shumashti |
| Illyrian | Albanian |
| Indo-Aryan | Sinhala, Maldivian, Hindi, Urdu, Assamese, Bengali, Bishnupriya Manipuri, Oriya language, Bihari languages, Punjabi, Lahnda, Gujuri, Dogri |
| Iranian | Ossetian language, Yaghnobi language, Saka languages, Pashto language Pamir languages, Balochi language, Talysh language, Bakhtiyar language, Kurdish language, Caspian dialects, Central Iranian dialects, Zazaki (Zaza language, Dimli), Gorani (Gurani), Persian language (Farsi) ), Hazara language, Tajik language, Tati language |
| Celtic | Irish (Irish Gaelic), Gaelic (Scottish Gaelic), Manx, Welsh, Breton, Cornish |
| Nuristan | Kati (kamkata-viri), Ashkun (ashkunu), Vaigali (kalasha-ala), Tregami (gambiri), Prasun (wasi-vari) |
| Romanskaya | Aromunian, Istro-Romanian, Megleno-Romanian, Romanian, Moldavian, French, Norman, Catalan, Provençal, Piedmontese, Ligurian (modern), Lombard, Emiliano-Romagnol, Venetian, Istro-Roman, Italian, Corsican, Neapolitan, Sicilian, Sardinian, Aragonese, Spanish, Asturleonese, Galician, Portuguese, Miranda, Ladino, Romansh, Friulian, Ladin |
| Slavic | Bulgarian language, Macedonian language, Church Slavonic language, Slovenian language, Serbo-Croatian language (Shtokavian), Serbian language (Ekavian and Iekavian), Montenegrin language (Iekavian), Bosnian language, Croatian language (Iekavian), Kajkavian dialect, Molizo-Croatian, Gradischan-Croatian, Kashubian, Polish, Silesian, Lusatian subgroup (Upper Lusatian and Lower Lusatian, Slovak, Czech, Russian language, Ukrainian language, Polesie microlanguage, Rusyn language, Yugoslav-Rusyn language, Belarusian language |
The classification of languages explains the reason for the difficulty of learning foreign languages. It is easier for a speaker of a Slavic language, which belongs to the Slavic group of the Indo-European family of languages, to learn a language of the Slavic group than a language of another group of the Indo-European family, such as the Romance languages (French) or the Germanic group of languages (English). It is even more difficult to learn a language from another language family, for example Chinese, which is not part of the Indo-European family, but belongs to the Sino-Tibetan family of languages.
When choosing a foreign language to study, they are guided by the practical, and more often the economic, side of the matter. To get a well-paid job, people choose first of all such popular languages as English or German.
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Additional materials on language families.
Below are the main language families and the languages included in them. The Indo-European language family is discussed above.
Sino-Tibetan (Sino-Tibetan) language family.
Sino-Tibetan is one of the largest language families in the world. Includes more than 350 languages spoken by more than 1200 million people. Sino-Tibetan languages are divided into 2 groups, Chinese and Tibeto-Burman.
● The Chinese group is formed by Chinese and its numerous dialects, the number of native speakers is more than 1050 million people. Distributed in China and beyond. And Min languages with more than 70 million native speakers.
● The Tibeto-Burman group includes about 350 languages, with a number of speakers of about 60 million people. Distributed in Myanmar (formerly Burma), Nepal, Bhutan, southwestern China and northeastern India. Main languages: Burmese (up to 30 million speakers), Tibetan (more than 5 million), Karen languages (more than 3 million), Manipuri (more than 1 million) and others.
The Altai (hypothetical) language family includes the Turkic, Mongolian and Tungus-Manchu language groups. sometimes include the Korean and Japanese-Ryukyuan language groups.
● Turkic language group - widespread in Asia and Eastern Europe. The number of speakers is more than 167.4 million people. They are divided into the following subgroups:
・ Bulgar subgroup: Chuvash (dead - Bulgar, Khazar).
・ Oguz subgroup: Turkmen, Gagauz, Turkish, Azerbaijani (dead - Oguz, Pecheneg).
・ Kypchak subgroup: Tatar, Bashkir, Karaite, Kumyk, Nogai, Kazakh, Kyrgyz, Altai, Karakalpak, Karachay-Balkar, Crimean Tatar. (dead - Polovtsian, Pecheneg, Golden Horde).
・ Karluk subgroup: Uzbek, Uyghur.
・ Eastern Hunnic subgroup: Yakut, Tuvan, Khakass, Shor, Karagas. (dead - Orkhon, ancient Uyghur.)
● The Mongolian language group includes several closely related languages of Mongolia, China, Russia and Afghanistan. Includes modern Mongolian (5.7 million people), Khalkha-Mongolian (Khalkha), Buryat, Khamnigan, Kalmyk, Oirat, Shira-Yugur, Mongolian, Baoan-Dongxiang cluster, Mogul language - Afghanistan, Dagur (Dakhur) languages.
● Tungus-Manchu language group is related languages in Siberia (including the Far East), Mongolia and northern China. The number of carriers is 40 - 120 thousand people. Includes two subgroups:
・ Tungus subgroup: Evenki, Evenki (Lamut), Negidal, Nanai, Udean, Ulch, Oroch, Udege.
・ Manchu subgroup: Manchu.
Languages of the Austronesian language family are distributed in Taiwan, Indonesia, Java-Sumatra, Brunei, Philippines, Malaysia, East Timor, Oceania, Kalimantan and Madagascar. This is one of the largest families (the number of languages is over 1000, the number of speakers is over 300 million people). Divided into the following groups:
● Western Austronesian languages
● languages of eastern Indonesia
● Oceanian languages
Afroasiatic (or Semitic-Hamitic) language family.
● Semitic group
・Northern subgroup: Aisorian.
・ Southern group: Arabic; Amharic, etc.
・ dead: Aramaic, Akkadian, Phoenician, Canaanite, Hebrew (Hebrew).
・ Hebrew (the official language of Israel has been revived).
● Cushitic group: Galla, Somalia, Beja.
● Berber group: Tuareg, Kabyle, etc.
● Chadian group: Hausa, Gwandarai, etc.
● Egyptian group (dead): Ancient Egyptian, Coptic.
Includes the languages of the pre-Indo-European population of the Hindustan Peninsula:
● Dravidian group: Tamil, Malalayam, Kannara.
● Andhra Group: Telugu.
● Central Indian group: Gondi.
● Brahui language (Pakistan).
The Japanese-Ryukyu (Japanese) family of languages are common in the Japanese archipelago and the Ryukyu Islands. Japanese is an isolated language that is sometimes classified as a member of the hypothetical Altaic family. The family includes:
・Japanese language and dialects.
The Korean language family is represented by one single language - Korean. Korean is an isolated language that is sometimes classified in the hypothetical Altaic family. The family includes:
・Japanese language and dialects.
・Ryukyuan languages (Amami-Okinawa, Sakishima and Yonagun language).
Tai-Kadai (Thai-Kadai, Dong-Tai, Paratai) family of languages, distributed on the Indochina Peninsula and in adjacent areas of Southern China.
●Li languages (Hlai (Li) and Jiamao) Thai languages
・northern subgroup: northern dialects of the Zhuang language, Bui, Sek.
・central subgroup: Tai (Tho), Nung, southern dialects of the Zhuang language.
・Southwestern subgroup: Thai (Siamese), Laotian, Shan, Khamti, Ahom language, languages of black and white Tai, Yuan, Ly, Kheung.
●Dun-Shui languages: dun, shui, mak, then.
●Be
●Kadai languages: Lakua, Lati, Gelao languages (northern and southern).
●Li languages (Hlai (Li) and Jiamao)
The Uralic language family includes two groups - Finno-Ugric and Samoyed.
●Finno-Ugric group:
・Baltic-Finnish subgroup: Finnish, Izhorian, Karelian, Vepsian languages, Estonian, Votic, Livonian languages.
・Volga subgroup: Mordovian language, Mari language.
・Perm subgroup: Udmurt, Komi-Zyryan, Komi-Permyak and Komi-Yazva languages.
・Ugric subgroup: Khanty and Mansi, as well as Hungarian languages.
・Sami subgroup: languages spoken by the Sami.
●The Samoyedic languages are traditionally divided into 2 subgroups:
・northern subgroup: Nenets, Nganasan, Enets languages.
・southern subgroup: Selkup language.
Lecture No. 14
Language classifications
Similarities and differences between languages. The similarity is material and typological.
Genealogical classification of languages. The concepts of “linguistic kinship”, “comparative-historical method”.
III. Typological classification of languages.
I. One of the tasks of linguistics is the systematization of existing languages (about 2500), differing in prevalence and social functions, features of the phonetic system and vocabulary, morphological and syntactic characteristics.
There are two approaches to classifying languages:
grouping according to the commonality of linguistic material (roots, affixes, words), and thereby according to the commonality of origin - genealogical classification;
grouping according to the common structure and type, primarily grammatical, regardless of origin - typological classification.
When comparing languages, you can discover easily perceptible lexical
and phonetic, i.e. material correspondences that imply certain patterns or regularities in the relationship between languages and the peoples who speak these languages.
The commonality of linguistic material (material proximity) is associated with the differentiation of dialects of the once common language. Divergence of dialects was caused by various reasons: changes in socio-historical conditions, migrations, contacts with other languages and dialects, geographical and political isolation, etc. Tribes that spoke different dialects of one previously common language, settling in new territories remote from each other, could not communicate as before. Contacts weakened, and language differences grew. The strengthening of centrifugal tendencies led over time to the formation of new languages, although genetically related. The systematization of related languages is reflected by genealogical classification.
In the languages of the world, common features are found in the structure of sentences, the composition of the main parts of speech, in form and word-formation structures - the so-called typological similarity.
This similarity is due to the fundamental unity of human nature, the unity of its biological and mental organization, which manifests itself in a number of dependencies between the communicative and intellectual needs and capabilities of a person and the structure of his language. If in a number of languages the observed typological similarity
covers a large series of systemically interconnected phenomena, then such languages can be considered as a certain linguistic type. The systematization of the world's languages into certain types is reflected in typological classifications.
II. Genealogical classification of languages– the study, description and grouping of the world’s languages based on common origin from a single source language.
Genealogical classification is based on the concept of kinship of languages. Related languages languages are recognized that originate from one base language - the proto-language and therefore have certain features:
the presence of materially related roots and affixes;
the presence of regular sound correspondences.
Establishing the genetic identity of languages, determining their degree
family relationships and connections are carried out using the comparative historical method. Comparative historical method is a set of research techniques used in the study of related languages in order to establish general patterns of their development and reconstruction of the parent language.
The comparative historical method is based on a number of requirements, compliance with which increases the reliability of the conclusions.
Establishing the genetic identity of languages should be done by comparing the most archaic forms. Because related languages have undergone changes and diverged from each other, it is necessary to penetrate into their preliterate state.
Comparison of supposedly related languages begins with a comparison of the dictionary, and not the entire array of common words is examined, but only those that are the most ancient in meaning. These are the following semantic groups of words:
Forms of the verb of being in the 3rd person singular. and plural present tense indicative mood (cf.: Skt. á sti - sá nti “there is”, lat. est – sunt, goth ist – sind, other glory there is - network);
Kinship terms (for example, "mother": Skt. mā tá r, lat. mater, other ex. moder, other glory mater, modern English mother, German Mutter);
The names of some plants and animals (for example, “mouse”: Skt. mū h, lat. mus, other upper German. mus, other glory mouse, modern English mouse, German Maus);
Names of parts of the human body, some tools, some natural phenomena (for example, “tooth”: Skt. dá ntam- wine pad unit, lat. dentem - wine pad units, modern English tooth, German Zahn, French dent );
Names of pronouns, numerals up to 10 (for example, “two”: Vedic. d(u)vā , lat. duo, other irl. dau, other glory two, modern English two, German zwei).
These groups of words should be equally represented in the languages being compared, because Unwritten languages lack vocabulary associated with civilization. The purpose of their comparison, in addition to establishing the nature of the relationship of common words in different languages, is also to analyze the phonetic and morphological structures of the word. The similarity of languages is manifested both in the coincidence of whole words and in the similarity (formal and semantic) of the minimal significant units of language - morphemes.
Therefore, the next stage of the study is a comparison of morphemes, expanding the base of comparison. There are significantly more common morphemes in related languages than common words. This is one of the signs of the relationship of languages. The importance of the criterion of grammatical correspondence lies in the fact that inflectional forms, unlike words and grammatical models of words, as a rule, are not borrowed (cf., Lat. am- a- t, German lieb- t, Russian love).
Comparison of morphemes makes it possible to show the phonetic similarity and dissimilarity of words and parts of words of related languages. This similarity and dissimilarity is called phonetic correspondence. Establishing sound correspondences is an important link for comparison.
According to the rule of phonetic correspondences, a sound that changes in a certain position in one word undergoes similar changes in the same conditions in other words (for example, initial Slavic b in Latin in some cases corresponds f, dating back to Indo-European * bh: Brother – frater, bob -faba, take -ferunt).
When establishing sound correspondences, it is necessary to take into account historical changes, which, due to the internal laws of development of each language, manifest themselves in the latter in the form of phonetic laws (for example, Russian wife corresponds to Norwegian kona, because in Scandinavian Germanic languages [k] comes from [g], and in Slavic [g] in the position before front vowels it changed to [zh], cf. Greek gyne "woman").
All indications regarding each element under consideration in several related languages should be taken into account, because the correspondence of elements of only two languages may be accidental.
The use of comparative history contributes to the reconstruction of the proto-language. Reconstruction of the proto-language– a set of techniques and procedures for recreating unattested forms and phenomena by comparing the corresponding units of related languages. For example, knowing the phonetic, grammatical and semantic correspondences of Indo-European languages, it is possible, based on Lat. fumus "smoke", ancient Greek. thymos “breath, spirit”, ancient Slav. smoke etc. restore the original form for this word dhumos. It is impossible to completely restore the base language, but the basic data of phonetics, grammar and vocabulary (to the least extent) can be reconstructed.
The results of studies of languages using the method of comparative historical linguistics are summarized in the genealogical classification of languages.
Different degrees of relationship between languages are conveyed by the terms “family”, “group”, “subgroup”.
Family- this is the entire set of languages of a given kinship (for example, Indo-European family).
Group (branch) - a union within a family of languages that display greater material proximity (for example, Slavic group, Germanic group etc.).
Subgroup- a union within a group of languages, the family ties of which are quite transparent, which makes it possible for their speakers to understand each other almost without hindrance (for example, East Slavic subgroup: Russian, Ukrainian and Belarusian languages).
III. The comparative study of the structural properties of languages, regardless of the nature of the genetic relationships between them, is called typology. The subject of structural typology is the internal organization of language as a system, i.e. similarity in the structure of languages at one of the levels. There are formal and intensive typologies.
Formal typology studies the means of expressing the meanings of language, i.e. grammatical categories that are necessarily expressed in a statement in this language.
Intensive typology is focused on the semantic categories of language and ways of expressing them, which, unlike grammatical ones, can be expressed by units of all levels.
The basis for classification in typology may be different. Traditional typological (morphological) classification reflects the desire to distinguish types of languages on the basis of general principles of the structure of grammatical forms. This classification is based on the opposition of roots and affixes.
In the morphological classification, the following types of languages are usually established: root (or isolating), agglutinative (or agglutinating), inflectional, incorporating (or polysynthetic).
Insulating (or root ) languages - these are languages in which words do not change, each root in which is isolated from the other, and grammatical connections between them are expressed using word order and intonation (for example, Chinese).
The absence of external signs of belonging to a grammatical category contributes to the development of grammatical conversion of words from one grammatical form to another under the influence of the grammatical environment.
All insulating tongues into root-insulating and base-insulating, i.e. having word-forming affixes.
TO root-isolating languages once A.V. Schlegel used the term amorphous (shapeless), because words in these languages are devoid of any forms. This subtype is characterized by the following characteristics:
In such languages there are not only inflectional, but also
word-forming affixes;
These languages lack parts of speech;
Each word represents a pure root, and the sentence -
sequence of immutable roots (for example, in Chinese cha
in boo, Where [cha]"tea", [in]"I", [bu]"No", [heh]"to drink", translated into
Russian I don't drink tea);
New concepts, new words are formed by adding roots (for example,
in Chinese Shui"water", ugh"carry", Shui+ ugh"water bearer");
A system of tones has been developed, depending on which the meaning of the word changes.
Core languages- these are modern languages in which the words do not change, but in these languages there are some word-building and formative affixes (for example, in the Malay language roemah "house", be- roemah"to live, to live").
Agglutinative or agglutinating (lat. agglutinare"stick") languages – these are languages that are characterized by a developed system of word formation and inflection, the absence of morphological alternations, and a unified system of declension and conjugation (for example, Turkic languages).
This type of language differs from other affixing languages in the technique of adding affixes and the functions they perform: unambiguous, standard affixes are mechanically attached to the stem of the word.
In an agglutinative word, the boundaries between morphemes are quite distinct, the root has no variants, each affix has only one meaning and each meaning is expressed by just one affix (for example, kaz. mektep-ter-ge"schools" -ter- expresses the meaning of the plural. numbers, -ge- meaning of dates. case).
In agglutinative languages, a positional way of formally expressing grammatical meanings dominates: a polysemantic word is built on the principle of gradual specification of the base, from affixes with a broader meaning to affixes that are more specific and with a less broad meaning (for example, Kaz. uy-ler-imiz-de-gi-ler-den“from those who are at home”: each subsequent affix, expressing grammatical meaning, clarifies the root).
Since in agglutinative languages the connection between morphemes is weak, they have developed a phonetic means for fastening morphemes - synharmonism- in all joining affixes a vowel of the same series is used as in the root (for example, kaz. ande r-le r"earth")
Agglutinating tongues are divided into languages with suffix agglutination(Kazakh language), languages with prefix agglutination(languages of Africa), languages with suffix-prefix agglutination(Georgian).
Inflectional or fusional (lat. fusio"fusion") languages – these are languages that are characterized by the multifunctionality of grammatical morphemes, the presence of fusion, morphological combinations, and an extensive system of declension and conjugation (for example, Indo-European languages).
In languages of this type, as in agglutinative ones, the main way of expressing grammatical meanings is affixation. But along with external inflection, internal inflection is widely used, i.e. a change in the composition of a root expressing grammatical meaning (for example, in English man – men “man - men”: the alternation of the root conveys the meaning of the plural).
Another characteristic feature of the inflectional system is the fusion technique of combining morphemes in a word. In a fusion word, the boundaries between morphemes are unclear (for example, in the word shoes morphemes are closely welded together, the root is connected, i.e. not used without service morphemes); service morphemes simultaneously express several grammatical meanings (for example, in the Russian word wife flexion -A has three meanings: feminine, nominative, singular).
Inflectional languages are also characterized by homonymy and synonymy of affixes (for example, in Russian -in- may have the value of singularity: pea and the value is big: house-in-a; in words tables, houses, children different inflections express the plural); different positions of affixes in relation to the root (roots, prefixes, suffixes, infixes).
Incorporating (lat. in "V", corpus"body", i.e. "introduction of something into the body" incorporate "insert") or polysynthetic (Greek poly "a lot" and synthesis "connection, combination") languages - these are languages that are characterized by the incompleteness of the morphological structure of the word, which allows the inclusion of other members in one sentence member (for example, a direct object can be included in the predicate verb). Incorporating languages include the languages of the Indians of North America, Chukchi-Kamchatka, etc.
A word in such languages acquires structure only as part of a sentence: there is no word outside the sentence; the sentence constitutes the basic unit of speech, which includes words (for example, the Chukchi word-sentence you – ata-kaa – nmy – rkyn“I kill fat deer”, the basis of this word-sentence you nmy rkyn, into which they are incorporated kaa"deer" and its definition ata"fatty").
Many languages occupy an intermediate position on this scale of morphological classification. Often, the terms “analytical languages” and “synthetic languages” are also used to characterize the grammatical structure of a language.
Analytical languages or analytical languages are languages in which grammatical meanings are expressed using independent words, i.e. dismembered transmission of lexical and grammatical meanings is carried out. The analyticism of the language is manifested in the morphological invariability of the word and the presence of complex constructions in which the grammatical meaning is conveyed either by a function word or by an independent word (for example, the Russian form I will love– analytical, the meaning of the future tense of the 1st person singular is conveyed by an auxiliary verb) in the presence of complex constructions in which the grammatical meaning is conveyed either by a function word or by an independent speech).
Synthetic languages or synthetic languages are those in which grammatical meanings are expressed primarily by affixes, i.e. grammatical meaning and lexical meaning are conveyed undifferentiated, in one word with the help of affixes, internal inflection, etc. (for example, in the word move-i-l-a with the help of affixes the meanings of the past tense, feminine, singular are conveyed. numbers).
In their pure form, analyticism and synthetism are not represented in any language in the world, because Each language contains both elements, although their ratio may be different (for example, in the Russian language, along with the predominance of synthetism, there are also analytical forms; English is an inflectional language of the analytical type, but synthetic forms are also observed in it).
In addition to the morphological typological classification, there are classifications built on the basis of other structural criteria - syntactic, phonemic, etc. Thus, the phonological classification of Slavic languages is known. Typological patterns in syntax are also revealed.
educational:
1. Kodukhov V.I. Introduction to linguistics. M.: Education, 1979. –
2. Maslov Yu.S. Introduction to linguistics. M.: Higher School, 1987. - p.221-
3. Reformatsky A.A. Introduction to linguistics. M.: Aspect Press, 2001. - p.
additional:
1. Amanbaeva G.Yu. Linguistic typology: Textbook. student manual
humanitarian universities. Karaganda: Publishing House of KarSU, 2002.
2. Mechkovskaya N.B. General linguistics: Structural and social typology
languages: Textbook. manual for students of philology and linguistics
specialties. M.: Flinta: Nauka, 2001.
3. Theoretical foundations of the classification of world languages. M., 1980.
4. Theoretical foundations of the classification of world languages. Kinship problems.
1Conversion(lat. conversio “transformation”) is the formation of a new word by moving it from one part of speech to another.
