HI-LING
LINGUISTICS IN THE HIGH SCHOOL
UNIT 2: VIOLATION OF MAXIMS
Lesson 1: Comparative Linguistics
Definition:
How do languages change over time? Are different languages related to each other and if yes, how can we tell? Are there general rules and structures that all or most languages share and what are they? These are some of the questions that Comparative Linguists seek to answer. The kinds of principles that are studied in Comparative Linguistics cover the nature of the language and the architecture of grammar, the evolution and history of language families, and the relationship of languages with social and cultural structures on the one hand, and with patterns in cognition and the brain on the other hand.
Key Concepts
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Language families
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Diachrony and Synchrony
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Historical Linguistics
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Sound Changes
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Language Contact
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Sprachbund
Linguistics is the scientific study of language. Comparative Linguistics is a discipline within linguistics that is interested in where and how languages differ from each other systematically, as well as the reverse: where, how and why are they similar to each other? How do languages change over time and why are they the way they are. Comparative Linguistics is chiefly interested in general patterns that shape each and every language and that seeks to formulate general principles of language. This is different from what you might be used to in school, where we study and seek to understand individual languages such as German, French, Italian or English, their grammatical rules and their vocabulary, typical speech situations etc.
The kinds of principles that are studied in Comparative Linguistics cover the nature of the language faculty and the architecture of grammar, the evolution and history of language families and language areas, general patterns in the acquisition of languages by children and adults, and the relationship of languages with social and cultural structures on the one hand, and with patterns in cognition and the brain on the other hand. However, the empirical foundation of Comparative Linguistics ultimately lies in individual languages and their histories.
Some key aspects of comparative linguistics include:
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Language Families: languages that are thought to have a “common ancestor.”
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Diachrony: The way a particular language changes over time, i.e., what differences are there for example between Old English and Modern English.
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Synchrony: The way languages, that exist at the same time, differ from each other, i.e., what differences (and similarities) are there for example between English and Swahili
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Historical Linguistics: Comparative linguistics often involves the study of historical linguistics, which seeks to trace the historical development of languages and identify how they have changed over time. This includes the study of phonological, morphological, and syntactic changes.
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Sound Changes: Linguists in this field study how sounds in languages evolve over time. They identify regular phonological shifts that occur in various languages and use these shifts to trace the history of those languages.
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Language Contact: The study of languages in contact, where languages influence each other, is also important in comparative linguistics. This can lead to language borrowing and the spread of linguistic features.
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Sprachbund: When languages share features due to geographical proximity, rather than because they derive from the same language
This first lesson focuses on language families, specifically the Indo-European one, and gives you an overview of the field.
Introduction
The history of the individual languages has led linguists to the conclusion that there is a genetic affiliation among the languages of the world. However, how well established this genetic affiliation is remains the subject of some debate among experts, which is why we have decided to only include those language families with overwhelming evidence and those with the highest number of speakers.
The six largest language families by language count are Niger-Congo, Austronesian, Trans-New Guinea, Sino-Tibetan, Indo-European, and Afro-Asiatic.
Niger-Congo and Austronesian are the two largest if you count how many languages they include, each with over 1,000 languages due to the incredible language diversity in sub-Saharan Africa and Southeast Asia, respectively. Based on speaker count, Indo-European and Sino-Tibetan are the largest two language families, with over 4.6 billion speakers between them. The two most spoken languages are in these families – English is classified as Indo-European, and Mandarin Chinese is classified as Sino-Tibetan.
1. Indo-European – 3.3 Billion
The Indo-European language family is the largest in the world. It consists of 447 daughter languages and has an estimated 3.3 billion speakers across Europe and Asia. This number of speakers represents nearly half of the total global population. Many languages in the Indo-European family are widely used, including English, Spanish, French, German, Russian, Punjabi, Bengali, and Hindustani. All of these modern languages descend from Proto-Indo-European, which developed during the Neolithic age. As the human population dispersed throughout the region, distance and geographic barriers created isolated pockets of civilizations. Over time, new languages and dialects formed. Some of the most important of these early languages include Latin, Mycenaean Greek, and Vedic Sanskrit.
2. Sino-Tibetan Languages - 1.4 Billion
The Sino-Tibetan language family is the second largest in the world. It consists of 456 daughter languages and has around 1.4 billion speakers throughout Asia. Some of these languages are spoken only by small populations that live in remote locations. This isolation means that linguists have been unable to thoroughly research and document these languages. The most widely spoken of the Sino-Tibetan daughter languages are Tibetan, Burmese, and Chinese. All modern-day Sino-Tibetan languages have evolved from the Proto-Sino-Tibetan language.
3. Niger-Congo Languages – 600 Million
The third largest language family in the world and the largest in Africa is the Niger-Congo. It consists of 1,536 daughter languages and has around 600 million speakers throughout Africa. This language family is further divided into 6 subgroups: Katla, Atlantic-Congo, Ijo, Dogon, Mande, and Rashad. Of the Niger-Congo languages, Swahili is the most widely used, with between 2 and 15 million native speakers and between 50 and 100 million second language speakers. It is the official language of Kenya, Tanzania, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Other languages, however, have a larger number of native speakers, including Igbo, Shona, Yoruba, and Fula.
4. Austronesian– 326 Million
The Austronesian language family is the fourth largest in the world in terms of the number of speakers. It is made up of 1,225 daughter languages and has approximately 326 million speakers spread throughout Oceania, Maritime Southeast Asia, and a few regions of mainland Asia. In terms of the number of languages, it is the second largest language family in the world and represents 20% of the tongues spoken in the world today. Some of the most widespread Austronesian languages include Javanese, Tagalog, and Malay. This language family once covered the largest area on earth, until it was surpassed by the Indo-European family during the era of European colonization.
5. Language Isolates
Interestingly, there are select languages in the world that do not belong to any single language family. When this happens, it is called a language isolate. Examples of languages that are language isolates include Korean, Sumerian, and Elamite. Many of the world's language isolates are found in Papua New Guinea, which is the most linguistically diverse country in the world. The language isolate phenomenon is also often seen in sign languages, as many sign languages evolve naturally on their own within smaller communities.
1 Language families
Video Input: The Indo-European connection
Activity
Can you think of more examples of words that are similar in French, German, English, and Italian?
What types of words are they?
Solution Agricultural words Numbers from 1-10 Family members Various natural phenomena
2 Indo-European Languages
The Indo European language family covers most of Europe and speads across Iran and Central Asia. As a result of colonial expansion, it is now also dominant in the Americas and in Australia and New Zeland. […] The Indo European family subdivide into a number of well-estabilished branches:
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The Germanic languages are dominant languages of Nortwestern Europe.
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This is the language family that includes English, Dutch, German and the Scandinavian languages
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The Celtic languages: Welsh in Wales, Irish on the west coast of Ireland, Breton in Brittany and Scots Gaelic in northewestern Scotland.
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The Romance languages occupy most of southwestern Europe and are descend of Latin, the language of Roman Empire. The major living languages are French, Spanish, Catalan, Portuguese, Italian and Romanian.
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Baltic languages. They have a strict relation to the Slavic languages. Russian, Belarusian, Ukrainian, to east. Polish, Czech and Slovak, to west. Slovenian, Serbo Croation, Bulgarian and Macedonian, to south. Albanian, Hellenic and Armenian.
Figure: Indo-European language family tree
Each student or group of students chooses and researches a specific language family (E.g. Indo-European, Afro-Asiatic, etc.).
Present information about its history, some key languages, and notable features you can find.
Exercise 1: Language Family Case Study
Video Input: How languages evolve - Alex Gendler
Questions:
1) What is one mechanism through which languages split?
2) What other reasons can there be for similar sounding words in a language, apart from deriving from the same word?
Activity
Solution 1) Some of the speakers of a language might migrate to another place and lose contact with the rest of the language community. Over time those two groups develop in separate ways, possibly also influence by the environment people live in 2) They can be borrowed from another language or they can be false cognates, meaning that they are only similar by chance.
Video Input: Intro to Historical Linguistics: Comparative Method
Questions:
1) How do you determine which languages are more closely related to each other?
2) What is the difference between historical languages that are attested and thosee that are not attested?
Activity
Solution 1) You compare some of their most basic vocabulary e.g. numbers, family relations, animals and see which languages have the least differences. 2) historical languages that are attested are documented. This means that linguists can be fairly sure in the conclusions they draw from them in terms of how closely they are related. For languages that aren’t attested, linguists need to reconstruct a hypothetical protolanguage. However the conclusions they draw from those kinds of reconstructions are less reliable.
3 Historical Linguistics: The comparative method
The comparative method is a fundamental technique in historical linguistics. It involves comparing the vocabulary, phonological features, and grammatical structures of related languages to identify common elements and systematic sound changes. By comparing these linguistic features across languages, it is used to identify regular patterns of change across multiple languages.
Below is a table comparing some common words between English, German, French, Italian, Spanish, Latin, and Russian. Which languages have more or less similarities in some words? Based on these words, could you say which languages are likely related more closely/had more contact with each other, and which languages had less influence on each other?
English
Mother
Father
Water
No
Yes
Night
Brother
Sun
Languages
Words
German
Mutter
Vater
Wasser
Nein
Ja
Nacht
Bruder
Sonne
French
Mère
Père
Eau
Non
Oui
Nuit
Frère
Soleil
Spanish
Madre
Padre
Agua
No
Si
Noche
Hermano
Sol
Italian
Madre
Padre
Acqua
No
Si
Notte
Fratello
Sole
Latin
Mater
Pater
Aquam
Non
Sic
Nox, Noctis
Frater
Solem
Russian
Madre
Padre
Voda
Niet
Da
Noch
Brat
Solnste
Select a set of basic vocabulary words (numbers, colors, common nouns) in two related languages. Compare the words and identify similarities and differences.
Exercise 2: Vocabulary Comparison
4 Sound changes
What do we observe? The initial sound in words changed from voiceless stops (e.g., "p," "t," "k") in the original Indo-European language to voiceless fricatives (e.g., "f," "th," "h") in the Germanic languages. For instance, the English word "Father" is connected with the German "Vater." - Grimm's Law (Indo-European Languages)
Grimm's Law is a set of systematic phonological changes that occurred in the evolution of the Indo-European languages. It describes a series of sound shifts that affected consonants.
Solution Similar groupings can be made with the words: Brother: French, Italian, and Latin retained the "f" vs. English, German, and Russian adopted "b" and Spanish "h" Water: Italian, Spanish, and Latin beginning with "a" vs. English, German, and Russian with "w/v" and French alone with an "o" sound Yes: Italian, Spanish and Italian with vs. English and German Some other words remain relatively similar across all languages (Mother, No, Night, Sun)
Exercise 3
Can you identify at least one more
Choose a language and create a timeline illustrating its historical evolution.
This should include:
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Development of writing systems
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Major linguistic changes
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Significant events impacting the language
Exercise 4: Language Evolution Timeline
Final thought for this lesson
Unlike other language specific studies like German Studies, English Studies, Slavic Studies, etc. that only focus on one language and its history, comparative linguistic aims to research similar changes across multiple languages by comparing them. This can lead to revelations as to which languages were more closely related and thus changed similarly, like through sound changes (e.g. the word “Father” in English and German, and Italian, Spanish, and Latin). Also, insights about more overarching languages structures can be made, such as word the word order being SVO in English, Italian, and German, whereas others have adapted SOV (Turkish and Japanese) or VSO (Arabic).
Take home questions
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Give a definition for the term "language family" and name 3
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Name the four language sub-branches within the Indo-European language family and name an example language for each
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What is the comparative method? Name an insight that can be gained from that method
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What is the difference between diachrony and synchrony?