Languages & Cultures of East Asia

Trad 101, Sections 18-19-20-21   Fall 2000

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Lecture Outline, 8/23/00 - Introduction to Language

How many languages are there in the world?

Atlas-- 6000
Comrie-- 4000

Why is this question impossible to answer?

1. Many parts of the world are not well-studied

New Guinea -- now better understood
1/5 of the world's languages

Still other remote areas, so the estimates vary widely
 

2. Difficult to distinguish between languages and dialects

decision often made on social-political grounds
e.g. Europe

A language is a dialect with an army and a navy.
 

linguistic criterion: mutual intelligibility

If mutually intelligible--> dialects of the same language
If not --> different languages
 
Results of applying linguistic criterion:
 
(1) Chinese languages rather than Chinese dialects.
Cantonese and Mandarin are not mutually intelligible.
 
(2) Swedish, Norwegian and Danish will turn out to be dialects.
 
(3) contradictory results: dialect chain
A <---> B <---> C <---> D

A                                        D
Distinction a continuum rather than clear-cut
 
(4) Notion of mutual intelligibility also a matter of degree
Intelligibility increases with familiarity.
Easier to understand when you want to understand.

3. Language change

Where do we draw the line?
Latin--> French, Italian (different languages)
Ancient Greek --> Modern Greek (stages of the same language)
Old English --> Modern English
Anglo-Saxon --> English
 

4. Many languages are on the verge of extinction

handful of speakers, in old age
e.g. Ainu.
1/2 of world's languages will become extinct in the next 100 years.

Which languages have the most speakers?
(in millions)

1. Chinese

1000
2. English

350
3. Spanish

250
4. Hindi

200
5. Arabic

150
6. Bengali

150
7. Russian

150
8. Portuguese

135
9. Japanese

120
10. German

100
11. French

70
12. Punjabi

70
13. Javanese

65
14. Bihari

65
15. Italian

60
16. Korean

60
17. Telugu

55
18. Tamil

55
19. Marathi

50
20. Vietnamese

50

What does it mean to say that two languages belong to the same language family?

English and German vs. English and Russian

two languages share a set of features-->
attributed to their common ancestors

English German
man Mann
's s

hypothesis: had a common ancestor;

i.e. belong to the same family (Germanic)

Germanic
English

German

Icelandic


Most languages in Europe: Indo-European languages

     Proto-Indo-European>
     Germanic, Romance, Celtic, Indo-Iranian, Balto-Slavic...

How might two languages resemble each other?

1. genetic relatedness: same family

2. by chance:

'dog' in Mbabaram (Australian aboriginal language) is dog

no other similarity between Mbabaram and English

many similarities between English and German.

3. language universals
(features that are common to all languages)

(1) onomatopoeia 'sound symbolism':
sound made by rooster

(2) word for 'mother' and 'father'
English, Chinese, Russian

(3) Certain language features frequently co-occur
If SOV, then postposition ('the table on')

4. areal contact

When languages are in contact -->
borrow features from one another

Chinese, Thai, Vietnamese

shared features:
    tones
    mono-syllabic
    simple syllable structure
    words

result of Chinese cultural influence,
not because they are genetically related.