Lecture 3. The structural essence of typological investigations.

Specifically Germanic Words and Word Building Patterns

Old Germanic languages	Modern Germanic languages
Gt O Icel OHG OE	Sw G NE
hus	hứs	hûs	hūs	hus	Haus	house
drigkan	drekka	trinkan	Drincan	dricka	trinken	drink
land	Land	lant	land	land	Land	land
saiws	sǽr	sēo	Sæ	sjő	See	sea
—	visdomr	wistuom	wisdom	visdom	—	wisdom
	fjands-	fiands-	feond-	fiendskap	Feind-	'hostility'
	kapr	caft	scipe		schaft	(cf. fiend)

 

(Though some of these words have no direct descendants we find the same suffixes in other formations: G Irrtum, Freundschaft, NE friendship – the roots may be common IE but the suffixes are specifically Germanic (vis- is related to R ведать, frēond to R приятель).

Both etymological layers of the vocabulary – the IE and the specifically Germanic layer – are native words. In addition to native words the OG languages share some borrowings made from other lan­guages. Some of the early borrowings are found in all or most languages of the group; probably they were made at the time when the Germanic tribes lived close together as a single speech community that is in Late PG. It is known that the name of the metal iron was borrowed from the Celtic languages in Late PG; cf. Celt isarno, Gt eisarn, O Icel isarn, OE isen, iren. (The Teutons may have learnt the processing of iron from the Celts.) A large number of words must have been borrowed from Latin prior to the migration of West Germanic tribes to Britain. These words reflect the contacts of the Germanic tribes with Rome and the influence of the Roman civilisation on their life; they mostly refer to trade and warfare; e.g.:

L pondō, Gt pund, O Icel pund, OE pund, NE pound

L prunus, O Icel plóma, OE plūme, NE plum

L strata via, OHG strậza, OS strậta, OE stræt, NE street

The content of the lecture: This lecture presents a short review of typological investigations in order to explain the most essential structural features in different languages. In this chapter are presented valid linguistic data which support the conclusions of linguistic typology that languages of different peoples may get united not only on the genealogical or areal but also on the structural basis and by this making the process of perception new languages easier and more productive.

Key words:structural type, language type, synthetic languages; asymmetry; analytical languages; type of a language, type in a language,agglutinative type; inflectional (inflective) type; isolating type; polysynthetic; introflective type; common/individual features; typological comparisons; agreement /adjoining; typological significance.

Objectives and tasks of the lecture:

After completing your work over the material of a lecture you should be able to discuss the essence of the following problems:

1. The steps in typological studies;

2. Wilhelm fon Humboldt and his classification;

3. Edward Sapir and his classification;

4. Language types by the vision of V. Skalitchka

5. Language type: the two structural versions of manifestation;

6. The main features of analytical languages;

7. The main features of synthetic languages;

8. The main features of polysynthetic languages;

9. Different typological techniques in each type of a language. Examples;

 

Recommendations for the students:When working over the material presented below, it is advisable to keep in mind that common structural features may be characteristic not only for kindred languages but for those of a different genetic origin. It is to remember that structurally the languages of any genealogical family may manifest either synthetic or analytical tendency in their functioning.

The material for lecture3:

§1.Most promising perspective in contrastive investigation of languages is that section of comparative linguistics known as linguistic typology, the founder of which was Wilhelm fon Gumboldt (1767-1835). The result of his activity in this direction took shape in a morphological classification of languages according to which there had been distinguished four classes of languages–isolating as Chinese , i.e. lacking formal morphemes; agglutinative as Turkic languages, joining the monosemantic morphemes in juxtaposition; flective or inflective languages , belonging to Indo-European and Semitic families, in which several lexico-grammatical relationships are usually rendered by a polysemantic morpheme. One more, a forth group of languages, named by W. fon Humboldt as incorporative, is presented by the languages of American Indians and the peoples inhabiting the territories of Northern Eurasian and Northern American belt.

The position concerning the structural classification of languages as well as the very terminological definitions had been readily accepted in linguistic circles and further successfully developed. Though the attempt to refer to the peoples as those with a low level of culture only because of a different structural organization of their languages appeared mistaken and was later rejected. To Humboldt, for example, flective (Indo-European and Semitic ) languages seemed to be ‘more correct’, because the unity of a word in these languages is provided by outer and inner inflection, so, in the process of language making they occupy the highest position. However, the attempts to group languages on a basis of a morphological structure of a word determined the following direction in typological studies and in a science of linguistic typology took a shape of ‘morphological classification’.

§2.In the XXth century arose the tendency to put into the basis of typological description the system of crisscrossing features, which, in its turn resulted in several approaches in typological studies.

2.1. American linguist E.Sapir (1884-1939), the author of the new typological classification, in establishing structural types suggested the three criteria as to the technique of juxtaposition and distinguishes the following types of languages:

a/Isolating type, with no formal elements in their original form;

b/Agglutinating(agglutinative)type, with no change in a root(stem);

c/The type on the principle of fusion, when root and morpheme get fused so strongly that the morphemic joint gets hardly distinguishable;

c/ Symbolic type when the inner change takes place by means of a shift in vowels, consonants, stress and intonation.

Into account is taken the degree of synthesizing lexical or grammatical meanings in one word. To Sapir in analytical languages we can see no cases of combining because in such language types a separate word is unable to adjoin meaningful morphemes. This type is well illustrated by English and French. In synthetic types the words take on affixes what makes them more flexible in forming new meanings. In polysynthetic type of a language (a third type suggested by Sapir) a degree of synthesizing is more highly expressed. Thus the author distinguishes three types of languages: analytical, synthetic and polysynthetic, in which the processes of isolation, agglutination, fusion and symbolization are accordingly realized.

2.2.V. Skalitchka, representative of the Prague Linguistic Circle, pointed out the main features of language types irrespective of any concrete language and suggested the list of these features though not full:

A – agglutinative type; B –inflectional (flective); C – isolating type; D – polysynthetic; E – introflective type.

§3.To close up our discussion we shall distinguish the most characteristics of different language types:

Agglutinative type is characterized with the bound cases of agreement between the linguistic elements and monosyllabism. Instead of agreement we may observe here the combination of the elements according to adjoining type. These features are very distinctly are manifested in modern English, cf.: in all cases of relationships the two members of a structure retain their zero indexes – nice boy/ girl/ /cat/ boys / girls/ cats – adjoining, and only in a very few cases as these boys but this boy - partial agreement. Moreover, the word-stock of this language predominantly consists of the monosyllabic words which, in their linguistic status are determined as the root-morphemes – morphological level, and lexical units – lexicological level. Here seems quite reasonable to regard Modern English as language the grammatical tendency of which is analytical. In Ukrainian or Russian we also may see the monosyllabic words but the matter lies in a developed system of case inflections what is categorially not characteristic of the present-day English. In general: in agglutinative techniques the morphemes are formally and semantically separate but get united into the words. In fact, this position is realized differently for the form and for the meaning. So, formal agglutination lacks mutual phonetic penetration -fusion -between the morphemes ( sandkhi-сандхи), while semantic agglutination presupposes the expression of every semantic element –seme- by a separate morpheme. Accordingly, fusion may be formal as in Russian word детский [д’ецк’ий] and semantic (cumulation-кумуляция), as in Russian\Ukrainian inflection «у» in the words ‘столу’, ‘хлопчику’ are encoded simultaneously grammatical meanings ‘dative -дательный падеж’, ‘singular - единственное число’ and gender ‘masculine -мужской род’.

Inflected type is strictly discriminated from other types with the clearly expressed agreement of the components within a structure. The categories of gender, number, case and determination in languages of this type are presented explicitly. Agreement as the type of syntagmatic connection presupposes at least two morphemes structure, i.e. root-morpheme + affixed morpheme, as in Russian or Ukrainian вод + а, сел + о.

In isolating typeof a language instead of agreement as the type of a syntagmatic connection we may distinguish adjoining, rigid word order in a sentence structure, the presence of prepositions and various particles to express relationships of the words in a sentence. The morphemes are arranged as distantly as possible. In this respect isolated languages de facto coincide with the analytical languages because the expression of grammatical meanings with the help of function words is practically the same. Also counts here the fact of maximal discrimination of morphemes. Though it is to remember that synthetic language may be both agglutinative and inflective.

For polysynthetic (incorporative) type of a language the presence of word-sentences or nominalized complexes is very characteristic, i.e. the discrimination between inflective and incorporative languages lies in the fact that the fusion of morphemes takes place on the level of a sentence, not a word.

§4. The distribution of languages as to their structural significance:

Inflective languages -e.g.Slavonic, Baltic.

Characteristics: polyfunctional nature of grammatical morphemes, the actualization of the phonetic processes on their joints, phonetically non-justified changes in a root, semantically non-motivated types of declination and conjugation.

Аgglutinative languages — e.g. Turkic, Bantu.

Characteristics: highly developed system of derivational and formal affixation,the absence of phonetically non-justified morphemic versions, the unific type of declination and conjugation, monosemantic affixes, the absence of suppletive forms.

Isolated languages — e.g. Chinese, Japanese and a great number of South-Eastern languages (mjao-yao-мяо-яо, tai-kadai -тай-кадайские ,etc).

Characteristics: no word change, no grammatical significance, weak counter position of notional and function words.

Incorporated languages — e.g. the languages of Northern-Eurasian peoples and many languages of Northern America(Chuktcha, Eskimo, etc)

Characteristics: possible inclusion into the composition of a verb-predicate other members of a sentence ( more frequent – an object, less frequent –a subject), some times with the cases of a concomitant morphophonological change in a stem.

Developing Skills in Preparing for linguistic typology:

Tasks for the seminars:

- Speak on the main principles of typological comparisons;

- Give your opinion on the structural essence of 1/ synthetic language; analytical language; incorporative; isolating;

- Explain the divergences in language classification, presented W.fon Humboldt, E.Sapir, I.Meschaninov, V.Skalichka;

- Give structural characteristics for each type of a language.