Term
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Definition
| when languages are classified into descent groups |
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Term
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Definition
| mutually unintelligible languages that use the same Chinese writing system |
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Term
| Swedish/Norwegian-type cases |
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Definition
languages are sometimes counted as separate if their speakers are politically separated
ex. Swedish and Norwegian [dialects of one language] |
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Term
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Definition
when there is a mutual unintelligibility between the casual or vernacular variety and the formal or standard variety
ex. Arabic |
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Term
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Definition
| languages not yet shown to be part of the larger groups |
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Term
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Definition
| a language descended from the Indoeuropean protolanguage... spoken perhaps in southeastern Europe |
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Term
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Definition
a language descended from what was probbaly northeastern Africa
includes Arabic, Hebrew, and Egyptian |
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Term
sibling languages
[AKA sister languages] |
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Definition
| the member languages of a language family |
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Term
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Definition
| the parent language from which sibling languages descend |
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Term
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Definition
| Arabic, Hebrew, Hausa (Nigeria) |
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Term
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Definition
| Navajo (Arizona), Mayan (Mexico), Quechua (Bolivia, Peru) |
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Term
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Definition
| Japanese, Turkish, Mongolian |
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Term
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Definition
| Vietnamese, Thai, Khmer (Cambodian) |
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Term
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Definition
| Indonesian/Malay, Hawaiian, Tagalog (Philippines) |
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Term
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Definition
| Tamil (India and Sri Lanka), Malayalam (India), Telegu (India) |
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Term
| Niger-Khordofanian [family] |
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Definition
| Swahili, Yoruba (Nigeria), Wolof (Sierra Lione |
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Term
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Definition
A. Germanic - English, German, Swedish/Norwegian
B. Celtic - Irish, Welsh, Breton (France)
C. Italic - Spanish, French, Portuguese
D. Slavic- Russian, Polish, Czech
E. Indo-Iranian - Hindi, Bengali (India, Bangladesh), Persian/Farsi (Iran) |
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Term
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Definition
| Finnish, Hungarian, Estonian |
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Term
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Definition
A. Sinitic - Mandarin Chinese, Cantonese, Hunanese
B. Tibeto-Burman - Tibetan, Burmese, Lahu (Thailand) |
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Term
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Definition
| the theory that states that language was invented or developed only once, so, therefore, all languages stem from the one common language |
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Term
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Definition
| the theory that the natural drive for human communication spawned multiple origins for language, meaning multiple starting languages |
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Term
language classification
AKA genetic language classification |
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Definition
| process of determining the grouping of languages on the basis of their shared descent from a parent language |
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Term
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Definition
| a method of vocabulary between languages suspected to be related by common descent |
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Term
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Definition
only words thought to be essential to human society
ex. lower numbers, body parts, kinship relationships, etc.
No Mimetic words |
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Term
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Definition
reason for a similarity between languages other than common descent- excluded for comparison
a word of basic vocabulary is less likely to be a word that expresses specifics of culture or technology
ex. one v. tortilla |
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Term
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Definition
reason for a similarity between languages other than common descent- excluded for comparison
tend to share meaning across languages
ex. crash or bow-wow
excluded from basic comparative vocabulary anyway |
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Term
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Definition
reason for a similarity between languages other than common descent- excluded for comparison
chance similarities are sometimes as likely to pop up as common descent changes |
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Term
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Definition
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Term
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Definition
| words whose similarities of meaning and form are explained by common origin |
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Term
| regular phonetic correspondences |
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Definition
| similarities of form that occur repeatedly and are the natural product of common origin |
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Term
| regularity of phonetic change |
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Definition
| strong tendency for all phones of a type in a given environment to change identically |
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Term
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Definition
| the process by which forms of a protolanguage are hypothesized by undoing the sound changes by which cognates are related |
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Term
| comparative method [language reconstruction] |
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Definition
| one identifies regular phonetic similarities between the phones of cognates and hypothesizes the original phone |
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Term
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Definition
| reconstructs earlier forms of a single language by making comparisons within that language |
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Term
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Definition
verbs in which one or more tenses does not match the base
ex. run, catch, ride, etc.
ex. ir, ser, etc. |
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Term
analogical change
[rule extension] |
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Definition
| tendency to replace irregular forms by regular forms |
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Term
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Definition
a rudimentary language created for the need of two groups to communicate, usually consisting of
1) words of the foreign language
2) pronounced according to the phonology of the local languages
3) combined in simple sentences according to the syntax of the local languages
prime ex. Spanglish |
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Term
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Definition
| a language with the range of expression of other languages evolved in the ordinary way |
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Term
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Definition
| a language such as English that has borrowed a great deal of words from other languages |
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Term
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Definition
| the theory that the Indoeuropean language family stems from this much older family, which includes Uralic, Altaic, Eskimo-Aleut, and perhaps Afroasiatic |
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