LANGUAGE
CLASSIFICATIONS
Typological Classifications of
Languages
Language classifications
Genetic
Typological
Sanskrit
Мāтар
Відгава
Свасар
Мус
Вāюс
Гірі
Нава
дваӮ
Траяс
Панча
-
-
-
-
Ukrainian
матір
-
-
mother
widow
sister
mouse
вітер
гора
новий
два
три
пять
-
wind
hill
new
two
three
five
вдова
сестра
миша
English
Language classifications
 Genetic
 Typological
Languages share
linguistic properties
because they’re
genetically related,
historically, they evolved
from the same parent
language.
Typological classifications
are based on shared
formal characteristics of
languages, irrespective of
their origin: properties of
sounds, words,
sentences.
Historical Comparative
Linguistics
Linguistic Typology
Typological classifications
English (Germanic), Classical Arabic (Semitic), Russian
(Slavic), form wh-questions by placing the wh-phrase at
the front of the sentence (called wh-fronting):
Who did you meet?
What did he do?
By contrast, Chinese, Japanese, and Egyptian Arabic
form wh-questions by leaving the wh-phrase in the end:
You met who?
He did what?
Typological classifications
Frederick Schlegel (1772-1829)
August Schlegel ( 1767-1845)
Wilhelm Humboldt (1767-1835)
Typological classifications
Morphological
Syntactic
Phonological
Morphological Classification
Isolating languages
Agglutinating languages
Flectional languages
 synthetic languages
 analytic languages
Polysynthetic languages
Isolating Languages
Each word in the sentence consists of just
one morpheme:
[ wƆ mǝn tan tçin ]
[ wƆ mǝn tan tçin lǝ ]
[ ta da wƆ mǝn ]
Agglutinating Languages
 Each morpheme expresses only one
meaning element.
 The breaks between morphemes (e.g.
between root and affix) are usually
easy to identify.
Agglutinating Languages
Turkish
ev
house
el
ev-im
my house
ev-e
to a house
ev-in
of a house
ev-de
in a house
ev-imiz
our house
ev-ler
houses
ev-ĵik-ler
little houses
ev-ler-de , ev-ler-imiz-e
N-A-pl-pron-prep
of our little hands
el-ĵik- ler -imiz -in
- hand
Agglutinating Languages
Swahili
Present
 ni-na-soma
 u-na-soma
 a-na-soma
Past
ni-li-soma
Future
ni-ta-soma
Flectional (Fusional)
 each affixal morpheme expresses more than
one meaning
 morphemes are frequently fused together (root
morphemes are affected by affixal morphemes)
Ukr.:
чита-є
чита-в
пис-ав
пиш-е
несу
носив
Greek:
lu-o
‘I loose’
lu-ousin
‘They loose’
Flectional languages
Synthetic
(читає, читають, читав, України, Петро
бачив Анну)
Analytic
(is reading, are reading, was reading,
capital of Ukraine, Peter saw Ann)
Polysynthetic (Incorporating)
These languages typically combine many
morphemes to form very long words.
qasu-iir-sar-vig-ssar-si-ngit-luinar-nar-puq
‘Someone did not find a completely suitable
resting place.’
 Historically, synthetic morphology is usually
derived from agglutinative morphology, which in
turn is derived from the analytic use of function
words:
isolating→analytic→agglutinating →synthetic
 Hence, different languages usually possess
features of different morphological types
Agglutination features in English
Сomerse
Comersial, comersialism,comercialist(ic)
establish
establish-ment
establish-ment-ary
establish-ment-ari-an
establish-ment-ari-an-ism
dis-establish-ment-ari-an-ism
anti-dis-establish-ment-ari-an-ism
Synthetic features in English
write
study
study
good
wife
-
wrote
studied
studies
better
wives
-
written
Analytic features in English
Come- are coming
Take – will take
Does – is done
Get – have got
Difficult – more difficult
A book - the book
Polysynthetic features in English
a devil-may-care attitude
a merry-go-round
The type of language is established on the basis
of its predominant features.
Isolating__E_____________U______Polysynthetic
REVISION
 What is the difference of genetic and typological
classification of languages?
 What is the type of language based on?
 Which language type construct words from clearly
defined morphemes?
 In which language type affixes are not easy to separate
from the stem?
 Which language type has mostly one- morpheme words?
 Which language type combines many morphemes to
form very long words?
 Are there pure types of languages?
Comment on the slide
Sanskrit
Мāтар
Відгава
Свасар
Мус
Вāюс
Гірі
Нава
дваӮ
Траяс
Панча
-
-
-
-
Ukrainian
матір
-
-
mother
widow
sister
mouse
вітер
гора
новий
два
три
пять
-
wind
hill
new
two
three
five
вдова
сестра
миша
English
d) Mandarin
Ta chi fan le
he eat meal …
Syntactic classifications
Basic word orders
SVO, SOV, VSO, VOS, OVS, OSV
Basic word order
types in the world’s languages
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
SOV
SVO
VSO
VOS
OVS
OSV
45 %
42 %
9%
3%
1%
1%
Phonological classifications
Vocalic
Consonantal
Language
Abkhaz
Italian
Ukrainian
Georgian
English
French
Finnish
Estonian
Thai
Consonants
Vowels
68
35
33
28
24
17
14
24
20
3
7
5
5
20
18
16
27
35
Total
71
42
38
33
44
35
30
51
55
Phonological Classifications
tone languages
stress languages
Tonemes give paradigmatic prominence to
a syllable, while stress mainly gives
syntagmatic prominence.
Tone languages (languages with
tonemes)
Chinese:
ma 1
ma 2
ma 3
ma 4
“mother”
“hemp”
“horse”
“to scold”
a high level tone
a rising tone
a low falling-rising tone
a falling tone
 Stress languages
 free stress(or unpredictable)
 fixed stress (or predictable)
• last syllable (French, Turkish)
• first syllable (Czech, Hungarian, Latvian)
• penultimate (second-last) syllable (Polish,
Swahili)
Home task:
Korunets I. p.33 Topics for class
discussion
Home assignment
Find 2 examples typical of each morphological
language type in Ukrainian and English