How many languages are there? At least 300 – and that’s just Northern Italy
Raffaella Zanuttini, Georgetown University
The answer to the question “How many languages are there in the world?” is
interesting on many different levels – political, sociological, demographic, historical, etc.
But how do we answer it? There is one obvious way of telling languages apart: different
languages have different words, so I love you and Je t’aime are sentences expressing the
same meaning in two different languages, English and French. But having a distinct set
of words, or lexical items, is not a good criterion for identifying a language, either
empirically or conceptually. It could lead us to distinguish varieties which may differ
only in the use of some words (for example, soda versus pop), while otherwise sharing
phonological, morphological and syntactic properties. More importantly, given that
words are arbitrary pairings of sound and meaning, this criterion seems to address the
question of how many different such pairings can be found in the world – for which the
answer seems clear, i.e. an infinite number.
A more insightful way to pursue an answer to our question may be found by
building on one of the key ideas of that part of modern linguistic theory generally known
as generative linguistics, founded by Noam Chomsky in the late 50’s. The proposal is
that, in studying language, one need not necessarily focus on the “external” or
extensional notion of language (E-language) - i.e. language as a set of words, as the
object that can be heard or read. One could focus instead on an “internal” or intensional
notion (I-language) – i.e. language as the abstract knowledge that allows native speakers
to produce the object that can be heard or read. An analogy with bread may be helpful to
illustrate these notions.1 Suppose we wanted to know how many different kinds of bread
can be found in the world. We could either focus on the extensional notion of bread and
examine the objects that are actually produced, or focus on a more abstract, intensional
definition, and study the recipes for making bread that can be found in the world.
What is the analog of a recipe in the case of language? The abstract knowledge of
that language that a native speaker has, which allows him/her to produce it and
understand it - what is called the native speaker’s competence. How do we study such
abstract knowledge, or competence? We observe what constitutes a well formed
expression of that language, as well as what counts as an ill formed linguistic form. For
example, we observe that, for any native speaker of English, I love you is a well formed
sentence, whereas I you love is not. Similarly, in Mary thinks that she’s smart, the
pronoun she can refer to Mary; whereas in She thinks that Mary is smart, she cannot refer
to Mary. These are facets of the knowledge of a native speaker, and must be represented
in the model that we build. How? In the form of a grammar, which can be thought of as
a set of instructions which lead the user to building all and only the well formed
sentences of his/her language – just like a recipe is a set of instructions that guide one
through the process of making bread.
Switching the focus of investigation to grammars, or models of the native
speakers’ competence of a given language, provides us a new way of thinking about how
languages differ: we can compare grammatical systems, examine how they differ, and
1
This analogy, as well the notion of parameter that follows, are discussed with exceptional clarity in Mark
Baker’s 2001 book The Atoms of Language.
possibly even count how many distinct ones exist. A careful comparison will reveal what
is shared across them, thus uncovering what may be seen as the core properties of
grammar. It will also reveal in which ways grammars may and may not differ. “How
many languages are there?” can now be interpreted as “How many grammatical systems
are there?” – still a difficult question, but one with the potential of revealing how this
particular aspect of our knowledge is organized.
Given this perspective, how do languages differ? A very useful notion to express the
way grammatical systems differ is that of parameter, which can be seen as a point at
which two grammatical systems can depart, i.e. make different choices. Consider the
following pair of sentences from Mohawk and English with identical meaning:
(1) Washakotya’tawitsherahtkvhta’se’ (Mohawk)
(2) He made the thing that one puts on one’s body (i.e., the dress) ugly for her
The striking differences between Mohawk and English E-languages can be seen to derive
from a different choice their grammatical systems made at the following choice point, or
parameter:
The Polysynthesis Parameter: Verbs must include some expression of each of the
main participants in the event described (the subject, object and indirect object).
Mohawk has the positive setting for this parameter, that is, it expresses on the verb each
participant in the event – in this case, the verb has a marker for all of the partcipants in
the event of putting. English, in contrast, adopts the negative setting of the parameter, and
so has an unencumbered verb and the participants in the event expressed in relatively
fixed positions in the sentence (the subject preceding and the object following the verb).
The notion of parameter is a useful way to express cross-linguistic differences for
at least two reasons. Parameters allow us to find systematicity in the way grammatical
systems differ, since some parametric choices are pre-requisites for others. Moreover, in
some cases, it is possible to reduce a cluster of differences in the E-language to a single
parametric difference – that is, to derive them from a single choice point in the
grammatical system. For example, Italian and English differ in the requirements imposed
on the subjects of their sentences. In English, all sentences with finite verbs must have an
overt subject, whereas in Italian the subject does not necessarily have to be overtly
realized (cf. She has already called versus Ha già telefonato). In English, subjects must
be overtly realized even when they do not have referential content, as in sentences with
weather related predicates (cf. It rains), whereas Italian doesn’t have subjects of this kind
(cf. Piove). Even when the logical subject is present in the sentence, in postverbal
position, English needs an overt subject in pre-verbal position (cf. There have arrived
three people), whereas Italian does not (Sono arrivate tre persone). This set of
differences in the E-languages can be reduced to a single parametric difference in the Ilanguage:
The Null Subject Parameter: A language may allow the subject of a finite clause
to lack phonetic content.
By assuming that Italian has the positive setting for this parameter and English the
negative one, this cluster of differences can be reduced to one.
Can we now say how many distinct languages, viewed as distinct grammatical
systems, are there? In addition to looking at broad cross-linguistic differences, like those
distinguishing Mohawk from English, we also need to look at more fine grained
differences as well, those that distinguish closely related linguistic varieties, for example
the Romance variety spoken in Venice,Venetian, from the one spoken in Milan,
Milanese, or the variety of English spoken in Washington from the one spoken in the
Appalachian area of Eastern Tennessee. What we find is that linguistc variation is both
surprisingly restricted and surprisingly rich. Take for example the aspect of grammar
concerned with the expression of sentential negation. The examination of a large number
of varieties reveals that only three basic strategies are adopted to make a sentence
negative: placing a negative marker in pre-verbal position, placing it in post-verbal
position, or using both a pre- and a post-verbal negative marker. This is a surprisingly
restricted set of choices, considering all the possibilities that are in principle available
(e.g., a negative sentence could be the mirror image of a positive one; or it could have a
special negative element after the third word from the left or from the right, etc.). Yet,
within this restricted set of choices, the amount of possible variation is surprisingly high:
depending on whether or not the pre-verbal negative marker can be the only negative
element in a clause, the language will or will not be able to negate imperatives;
depending on whether the post-verbal negative marker occurs to the left or to the right of
certain adverbs, it will or will not be able to co-occur with another negative element in
the sentence. What we see is the existence of micro-parameters: choice points at which
grammars can differ only minimally and yet determine subtle but visible differences in
the E-languages, even when they share most syntactic properties.
So, how many grammatical systems are there? Surprisingly few – in the sense
that variation within grammatical systems is highly restricted; and at the same time
surprisingly many, in the sense that a particular grammatical choice can exhibit fine
grained distinctions which yield closely related but distinct E-languages. In Northern
italy, it has been argued, one can find over 300 distinct grammatical systems. What about
in United States?