Language TypologyMichael Opper – Ling 111December 5, 2011

What is Typology?• ‘Taxonomy’• ‘Classification’• Classifying phenomena into types

• As linguists, we are interested in classifying languages into types.

Languages and Typology• By comparing several languages, we discover recurring

patterns.• Based on our observations, we try to explain linguistic

universals• A common origin for all of the world’s languages seems to be

an obvious explanation for universals. However, this is speculative and untestable.

• Language Typology, as will be discussed today, classifies languages into types based on linguistic phenomena• Morphology – Word Formation• Syntax – Determiners and Word Order• Phonology – Possible Syllables and Phonemes

Morphology and Typology• Language Typology as a field probably began with

morphological typology as proposed by Joseph Greenberg in the 1950s-1970s

• Traditionally, languages have been classified into four types• Analytic – sequences of free morphemes/ word = morpheme• Agglutinative – Bound morphemes affix to stems and each

morpheme is distinctively clear• Fusional – Bound morphemes affix to stems, but morpheme

boundaries unclear• Polysynthetic – Entire clauses are single words

• These categories are often not clear-cut.

Continuum: Analytic to Polysynthetic

Analytic Languages• Each word is a morpheme.• Purely analytic languages are called isolating languages, they

do not use affixes to form words• Ex. Vietnamese

Agglutinative Languages• Morphemes essentially have one form and are easy to identify

in a given word.• Ex. Turkish

Fusional Languages• Words are formed by adding bound morphemes to stems.

However, these morphemes aren’t always easy to identify.• Ex. Spanish

Polysynthetic Languages• Highly complex words are formed by combining several stems

and affixes. Nouns become part of a verb stem.• Ex. West Greenlandic

How many languages have verbs?

A. Roughly 30%

B. Roughly 75%

C. Around 85-90%

D. 100%

All Languages Have Verbs!• Verbs denote actions• All languages also have nouns• Nouns denote people, places, or things• The distinction between nouns and verbs appears to be

universal across languages of the world.• This entails that actions and entities are hard-wired concepts

in human language/cognition and must be distinguished from one another.

Adjectives are not Universal!• Certain parts of speech are universal, adjectives are not.• In English, we tend to use the copula ‘to be’ between a subject

and an adjective. • Ex. The woman is tall

• In several other languages, adjectives work like verbs forming a predicate about a verb.

• Ex. Ilocano (an Austronesian language in the Philippines):

Natayag daydyay babaeTall (marks the topic) woman‘The woman is tall’

Adjectives in the World’s Languages

Areal Effects• Europe was entirely blue• Southeast Asia and China were entirely red• Is this more than a coincidence?• Languages in the same area tend to influence one another• Through borrowing and shared developments it appears that

patterns often reoccur throughout a given region even if the languages of that region are not closely related.

• Ex. Chinese, Thai, and Vietnamese are NOT related languages, but share the following characteristics:• Verbal encoding for adjectives (as seen in the last slide)• SVO word order• Morphemes are monosyllabic

Determiners• When we were studying syntax we saw that English NPs often

require determiners: NP -> (Det) N. • Ex. The cheese, A book…

• Sometimes English NPs do not require determiners:• Ex. Mom, Mike, Steve

• NPs in some languages ALWAYS require determiners• Many languages NEVER use determiners in their NPs.

One or the other…• Some languages have a definite article (the) or an indefinite

article (a), but not both• Kutenai (language isolate in North America) has the definite

but lacks the indefinite

• Madang (Papua New Guinea) has the indefinite, but lacks the definite

More about Determiners• In some languages a demonstrative (this/that) and definite

article are the same, but their syntax may be different• Ex. Ute (Western US)

• In some languages, the indefinite article and the number ‘one’ are the same. Syntactic order often disambiguates the difference.• Ex. Turkish

Definite Articles

Indefinite Articles

Word Order• In HW4 we saw that Chinese and English have the same basic

word order – Subject Verb Object• But this is not the only word order in languages of the world• Since there are three parameters in variation (Subjects, Verbs,

and Objects), we should be able to see six word order patterns (by factorial operation 3! = 3*2*1 = 6):

• SOV• SVO• VSO• VOS• OSV• OVS

Which of the Following Orders is LEAST common?

A. SVO

B. SOV

C. OSV

D. VSO

A Geographical Perspective on Word Order

Why SOV, SVO, and VSO?• SOV and SVO are significantly more common than OSV.• The other orders (OVS, VSO, VOS) are essentially non-existent.• Pragmatics (explanations based on practicality) can explain the

observed trends.• SV order can be attributed to the fact that there is a tendency

for subjects to be topics – comments are made about topics after they are introduced as a human cognition universal

• V and O are typically adjacent because they constitute a verb phrase

• Movement occurs – VSO languages are SOV in deep structure and the verb moves to the front of the sentence. Take Ling 315 for more details on this phenomenon.

Economy as an Explanation• Elements which are highly predictable in context tend to be

omitted• Dropping of subject pronouns (pro-drop) is common in the

world’s languages• Ex. Spanish Lo compré ‘I bought it”

• Agreement makes pronouns redundant and uneconomical.• Note that English is not rich in agreement morphology. English

sentences require subjects.• It rained• I bought it

A Review of the Syllable• Earlier in the semester we learned about syllable structure:

• English can have consonant clusters in both the onset and coda:• Ex. strengths /strɛŋkθs/

• This is not true of all languages of the world.

Syllable (σ)

Onset Rhyme

(C)s Nucleus (V) Coda (C)s

Possible Syllable Types• Which of the following syllable types are found in all

languages?

A. CV

B. V

C. CCV

D. CVC

CV is Universal• All documented languages have CV as a possible syllable type• In some of these languages a consonant in the onset is

obligatory – a singleton V is impossible in these languages. Ex. Arabic

• Some languages allow vowels to stand alone as their own syllables but do not allow coda consonants

Ex. Naxi (Tibeto-Burman – China)• Consonant clusters are complicated. Some languages allow

Consonant clusters in the onset position, but ban clusters in coda position. There are languages in which the reverse is true.

Syllables Across the World

Velar Nasal• English only allows velar nasals in the codas of syllables • There isn’t a letter in the Roman Alphabet for this sound. • When writing English (or transliterating sounds of other

languages) we use the combination ng for the sound /ŋ/• But just how rare are velar nasals?

Velar Nasal from WALS

Velar Nasal• From the map on the previous page, we saw that roughly half

of the world’s languages completely lack a velar nasal phoneme.

• Of the languages which do have a velar nasal, many only permit velar nasals in coda position.

• No real theoretical claim can be made about this distribution.• Note the following areal distributions:• Velar nasals in both onset and coda are the norm in Southeast

Asia and are quite common in Africa• Altaic languages (spoken in Central Asia) allow velar nasal onsets• Western European languages and Eastern Native American

languages typically lack velar nasals.

Front Rounded Vowels• Examples of front rounded vowels include: [y, Y, ø, œ, æ, a]• English lacks these vowels.• Note that English also lacks back vowels (except for ɑ as in

father)

• There’s a perceptual reason for this. Basically rounding correlates with backness and unrounding correlates with fronting.

Front Rounded Vowels from WALS

Front Rounded Vowels• As seen on the map, most languages lack front rounded

vowels entirely• It appears that most of the languages which have front

rounded vowels are not closely related (ex. French, Albanian, Mandarin, and Turkish)

• The retention of front rounded vowels can be attributed to faithfulness and the disappearance or lack of front rounded vowels can be attributed to markedness.

• Take 313 next semester to learn more about this issue.

One last thing• Making empirical claims about language universals relies on

detailed descriptions of hundreds of languages.• Of the 6000 or so languages spoken at the present, more than

50% are believed to become extinct by the end of the 21st century. The last living speaker of an endangered language dies approximately every two weeks.

• Extensive language documentation at the present is necessary not only for the study of theoretical linguistics, but also to preserve records of our diverse world heritage.