The language classification principles

Within the field of linguistics, three different approaches to language classification are used.

Genetic (genealogical) classificationcategorizes languages according to their descent. Languages that developed historically from the same ancestor language are grouped together and are said to be genetically related. This ancestor may be attested (that is, texts written in this language have been discovered or preserved, as in the case of Latin), or it may be a reconstructed protolanguage for which no original tests exist (as is the case for Indo-European).

Although genetically related languages often share structural characteristics, they do not necessarily bear a close structural resemblance. For example, Latvian and English are genetically related (both are descended from Indo-European), but their morphological structure is quite different. Of course, Latvian and English are very distantly related, and languages that are more closely related typically manifest greater similarity.

On the other hand, it is also necessary to recognize that even languages that are totally unrelated may be similar in some respects. For example, English, Thai, and Swahili, which are unrelated to each other, all employ subject-verb-object word order in simple declarative sentences.

For this reason, another approach to language classification is useful. Known as linguistic typology (typological classification), it classifies languages according to their structural characteristics, without regard for genetic relationships. Thus, typologists might group together languages with similar sound patterns or, alternatively, those with similar grammatical structures.

Finally, areal (geographical)classification identifies characteristics shared by languages that are in geographical contact. Languages in contact often borrow words, sounds, morphemes, and even syntactic patterns from one another. As a result, neighboring languages can come to resemble each other, even though they may not be genetically related.

Thus, according to the genetic classification, the English language can be described like this:

Family Indo-European

Branch West Indo-European

Group Germanic group

Sub-group West Germanic

Language English

According to the typological principle, languages are classified into synthetic, analytic, and agglutinating languages. A synthetic language is characterized by many inflectional affixes. An analytic language would contain only words that consist of a single (root) morpheme. In such a language there would be no affixes, and categories such as number and tense would therefore have to be expressed by a separate word. An agglutinating language has words that can contain several morphemes, but the words are easily divided into their component parts (normally a root and affixes). In such languages, each suffix is clearly identifiable and typically represents only a single grammatical category or meaning.

Date: 2016-01-03; view: 1138