APPLICATION OF LINGUISTICS WEEK 2- TYPOLOGY AND INTRODUCTION TO ABORIGINAL LANGUAGES. Course Notes:

Monday, Jan. 13RECALL: TYPOLOGICAL CLASSIFICATION • Typological classification categorizes languages by looking at similarities in linguistic structures • i.e. phonology, morphology, and syntax • We are trying to identify linguistic universals • Structural characteristics which occur in most or all languages • Allow us to make predictions about other languages (possible and impossible)LINGUISTIC UNIVERSALS • Absolute Universals: • Occur in ALL languages • Universal Tendencies: • Occur in MOST languages • Implicational Universals: • If X then Y (but not if Y then X) • Having one characteristic will imply the presence of another feature • Typically, a marked (a less common) structure implies the existence of an unmarked (a common) structureUNIVERSALS EXAMPLES • Absolute Universals: All languages have Z •e.g. All languages have vowels and consonants • Universal Tendencies: Most languages have Y •e.g. Most languages have at least one liquid • Implicational Universals: If a language has X, it probably has Y •e.g. If a language has affricates, it has fricativesMARKEDNESS • Unmarked characteristics are more common • Marked features are more complex and less common • Thus, whenever we see a marked feature, we also often see an unmarked counterpartTYPOLOGY: MORPHOLOGY Recall: • Words: freestanding units of meaning that are comprised of one or more morphemes • Morpheme: the smallest meaningful unit of languageMORPHOLOGICAL TYPOLOGY Languages are generally classified into four morphological types: 1. Isolating (analytic) 2. Agglutinating 3. Fusional (inflectional) 4. PolysyntheticMORPHOLOGICAL TYPOLOGY Isolating languages: Mandarin Ta ba shu mai le He ObjMark book buy past ‘He bought the book’ Ta chao le yígecài hen xiang he cook past a dish very delicious ‘He cooked a dish that was very delicious’MORPHOLOGICAL TYPOLOGY • Notice that Isolating languages have an almost 1-to-1 morphemeto-word ratio (perfect analytic = 1-to-1) • Words in isolating languages are often unaffixed, bare roots • Bound morphemes (morphemes that cannot stand alone) are very infrequent • Notice that in Mandarin an object marker (‘ba’) is an independent, free-standing wordMORPHOLOGICAL TYPOLOGY Agglutinating languages: Turkish el ‘the hand’ elimde ‘in my hand’ elim ‘my hand’ ellerim ‘my hands’ eller ‘the hands’ ellerimde ‘in my hands’ How do we break down Turkish words into morphemes (root + affixes)? What is the meaning associated with each morpheme? el = hand, -im = possessive (my, her), -ler = plural, -de = locationMORPHOLOGICAL TYPOLOGY • In Agglutinating languages, each affix represents a single piece of grammatical information • More-or-less one-to-one matching between morphemes and meaning • A much higher morpheme-to-word ratio (more affixes in a word)MORPHOLOGICAL TYPOLOGY Fusional languages: Russian Singular Plural Nominative nog-a nog-i Dative nog-e nog-am Instrumental nog-oj nog-ami noga ‘leg, foot’, feminine noun Does the approach we used with Turkish work for Russian?MORPHOLOGICAL TYPOLOGY • Fusional languages have affixes that express multiple bits of grammatical information at the same time • There is almost no one-to-one match between morphemes and meaning • Higher morpheme-to-word ratioMORPHOLOGICAL TYPOLOGY Polysynthetic languages: Greenlandic Eskimo illu- mi- niip- puq (illuminiippuq) House his be-in 3Sg-Ind ‘He is in his own house’ tuttu- si- vuq (tuttusivuq) Caribou come-across 3Sg-Ind ‘He saw a caribou’MORPHOLOGICAL TYPOLOGY • Polysynthetic languages often have a single word (long string of roots and affixes) representing meanings that are associated with whole sentences in other languages • Often verb + object (and sometimes subject) are inflected onto the verbMORPHOLOGY: IMPLICATIONAL UNIVERSALS • If a language has inflectional affixes, it will also have derivational affixes • if a word has both derivational and inflectional affixes, the derivational affix is closer to the rootTYPOLOGY: SYNTAX Word Order: The basic units of word order are Subject (S), Object (O) and Verb (V) All six possible orders are attested:WORD ORDER • SOV, SVO, and VSO = ~95% languages • The commonality? • Subject precedes Object http://wals.info/chapter/81IMPLICATIONAL UNIVERSALS • Languages with Verb Object (VO) order always have prepositions, not postpositions Italian Prepositions dalla casa from-the house ‘from the house’ dalla casa from the houseIMPLICATIONAL UNIVERSALS • Languages with OV order have postpositions Guugu Yimidhirr (Australia) Postpositions yuwaal ngahn beach from ‘from the beach’IMPLICATIONAL UNIVERSALS In OV languages, PPs appear before the verb Japanese Taro-ga [nichiyoubi ni] tsuita Taro-NOM [Sunday on] arrived ‘Taro arrived on Sunday’ Taro-ga nichiyoubi ni tsuitaIMPLICATIONAL UNIVERSALS In VO languages, PPs follow verbs English Susan ate [at home]. Susan ate at homeIMPLICATIONAL UNIVERSALS In OV languages, Possessor + Noun Japanese Yuki-no ringo Yuki-GEN apple ‘Yuki’s book’IMPLICATIONAL UNIVERSALS In VO languages, Noun + Possessor Russian kniga Olg-i book Olga-GEN ‘Olga’s book’HEAD-FINAL VS HEAD-INITIAL OV languages = Head-Final VO languages = Head-Initial Navajo EnglishREFERENCES Matthew S. Dryer. 2013. Order of Subject, Object and Verb. In: Dryer, Matthew S. & Haspelmath, Martin (eds.) The World Atlas of Language Structures Online. Leipzig: Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology. (Available online at http://wals.info/chapter/81) Statistics Canada. 2016 Census of Population. https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/pub/11-627-m/11-627-m2017035-eng.htm https://www12.statcan.gc.ca/census-recensement/2016/as-sa/98-200- x/2016022/98-200-x2016022-eng.cfm