World Languages Families (Trees)
(163-173)
• This Lecture reviews:
• Another domain of Historical linguistics which
deals with:
- The Methods of classifying the world related
languages
- How family trees established.
Language family classification:
• There are more than 250 LF the next side
shows where these families are found and
how many of them in each region.as follow:
------------------------------*LF: (language families)
Some Languages Families around the World
Areas
Number of language families Number of Languages
Americas
150
2000
New Guinea
60
750.800
Australia
26
250
Africa
20
2500
Europe+ Asia
37
18(Isolate)
Europe
3 surviving families
Indo European- Uralic- Basque
Sino- Tibetan is and its important
families:
• This language is spoken by more people than
others, it nearly ‘ languages as recent
linguistics research found(25 years ago)
• Other scholars with Chinese scholars add
Hmong-Mie(Mao-Yao) and Tai- Kadai to the
family.
• Other limit it to Chinese and Tibeto- Burman
Languages.
Next:
The following are a few of the better known
families that found thro’ comparative
Linguistics:P:164 as follows in the next slide:
The following are a few of the better
known families. (See all (P:164)
Language
Place
Number
Level
Algonquian ‫الجونكون‬
N. USA
35
v. advanced
Athabascan ‫اثاباسكان‬
N. USA
30
Relatively good
800
“””
Austronesian‫استرونيشن‬
Bantu
N. Africa
400
Much moderate
Berber/
S. Africa
60
Much needed
Caribbean
S. USA
60
much needed
Chadi
Africa
140
Work needed
Hmong- Mien
Miao- Yao
15
Much needed
Endo- European
include
25 Romance L.
many Iranian and
indic
85 Europe
The most studied L
of all families
Mayan
Mexico+ central
America
31
Very advanced
Terminology used to group language
families and subgrouping:
The Terms
Meaning
1.
2.
3.
1.
The branches of a L. families(sisters)
2.
3.
A group of genetically related Ls.
labels or entities given by
linguists to thegreater or lesser
Ls. Relations
Subgrouping( internal subfamily)
Language families
Linguistics classification
4. Dialect
5.
Exotic)‫إكزوتك‬
6.
Language
7.
Adding (an) to names
8.
Genetic unit
9.
An isolate
10. Different magnitude
4. Regional or social language
5. Little known- minority L .(strange)
6. Is a linguistics entity
7. To link a languages with nations
8. Refer to L family (isolate)
9. L with no known relatives(single)
10. Different time depths
(Ls: means Languages)
Terms (P:166)
Terms
11. Proto
12. Phylum ‫فولم‬
13. Postulated family
Meaning
11.Name Given to subgroup L. family.
12. stock- macro LF
13. When they fail to propose
a family for a language .
6.4 How to Draw(classify) a Family trees
(or Subgrouping a.language)(P:166)
Definition:
Is to classify or determine which sister languages
are most closely related to one another and put
it into 2 or more daughter languages
(see Indo- European family tree on P:168)
Fro examples:
“the original language consists of (Protolanguages”
Shape 3:
Top
Language
Families
• By breaking the original proto L came the
daughters as follows: shape 1
Original Lang.
Proto
daughters
Examples 2: shape 2
Proto
romance
Western
romance
SpanishPortuguese
French.etc
• That means the proto languages that spilt
from the original language, also spilt into
daughters and daughters spilt into new
branches for example: Proto romance
To western romance and this to
subgroup (Spanish- Portuguese…)
This lead to the definition of subgrouping as in
the next slide:
Is all daughters that descended from ancestors(as proto
language and this also has at least one sister– it
descended from ancestor (original L) for example:
English from
Proto
Germa
nic’
this
has
sisters
as:
German- Swedish- Islandic
And German has daughters: Slavic- Italic-Iranian
What are the goals of subgrouping? :
- Is to determine or discover which language
belong to intermediate parents
- Is to determine the family tree for genetically
related languages. As given in shape 1-2-3)
this is as a result of historical linguistics works.
(See another family trees on (P: 168- 169) for
more info.
What the most standard criteria for
grouping languages??
• The criteria is Shared innovation.
• What is it?
• It is the linguistics changes which shows a
departure of some trait (characters) protolanguage and is shared by a subset of the
daughter languages. (look at Mayan tree- figure
3- P:171) also, it is:
• It is inherited as a result of a change which took
place in a single daughter language, then it
diversified )‫)دايفرسي فايد‬into daughter of its own.
The following table shows the sound changes in
Mayan which is Innovation shared:
before
after
w
b
g
b
h
r
t
E
o
Q
ing
h
y
?
T
C
I
u
K
n
Innovation in morphology and syntax as
important same as on phonology innovation.
shared retention(storing) is :
• It is something that different daughter
language inherit unchanged from the protolanguages. As
• Huastec and Mam )in figure 6.3 P:171:are
belong to separate branch of family --- retain
or shared the vowel length contrast – and
also for e.g. (q> k>)(k>q) place in Huastec
• Also some sound change as ts>s
Quiz….Quiz….Quiz
• Attention Please:
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