Frequently Asked Questions About Linguistics

Languages of the past can be recovered by comparative reconstruction from their descendants. The comparative method relies mainly on pronunciation, which changes very slowly and in highly systematic ways. If you apply it to French, Spanish, and Italian, you reconstruct late colloquial Latin with a high degree of accuracy; this and similar tests show us that the method works.

Also, if you use the comparative method on unrelated languages, you get nothing. So comparative reconstruction is a test of whether languages are related (to a discernible degree).

The ancient languages Latin, Greek, Sanskrit, and several others form a group known as "Indo-European." Comparative reconstruction from them gives a language called Proto-Indo-European which was spoken around 2500 B.C. Many Indo-European words can be reconstructed with considerable confidence (e.g., *ekwos 'horse'). The grammar was similar to Homeric Greek or Vedic Sanskrit. Similar reconstructions are available for some other language families, though none has been as thoroughly reconstructed as Indo-European.
 
 

A language family is a group of languages that have been proven to have descended from a common ancestral language. Branches of families likewise represent groups of languages with a more recent common ancestor. For example, English, Dutch, and German have a common ancestor which we label Proto-West-Germanic, and thus belong to the West Germanic branch of Germanic. Icelandic and Norwegian are descended from Proto-North Germanic, a separate branch of Germanic. All the Germanic languages have a common ancestor, Proto-Germanic; farther back, this ancestor was descended from Proto-Indo-European, as were the ancestors of the Italic, Slavic, and other branches.

Not all languages are known to be related to each other. It is possible that they are related but the evidence of relationship has been lost; it's also possible they arose separately. It is likely that some of the families listed here will eventually turn out to be related to one another.

While low-level close relationships are easy to demonstrate, higher-order classification proposals must rely on more problematic evidence and tend to be controversial. Recently linguists such as Joseph Greenberg and Vitalij Shevoroshkin have attracted attention both in linguistic circles and in the popular press with claims of larger genetic units, such as Nostratic (comprising Indo-European, Uralic, Altaic, Dravidian, and Afroasiatic) or Amerind (to include all the languages of the New World except Na-Dene and Eskimo-Aleut). Most linguists regard these hypotheses as having a grossly insufficient empirical foundation, and argue that comparisons at that depth are not possible using available methods of historical linguistics.

This list isn't intended to be exhaustive, even for families like Germanic and Italic. Nor is it the last word on what's a "language"; see question 12.

Note: English is not descended from Latin. English is a Germanic language with a lot of Latin vocabulary, borrowed from French in the Middle Ages.

Proto-languages are reconstructed using the comparative method. The first stage is to inspect and compare large amounts of vocabulary from the languages in question. Where possible we compare entire paradigms (sets of related forms, such as the those of the present active indicative in Latin), rather than individual words.

The inspection should yield a set of regular sound correspondences between the languages. By regular, we mean that the same correspondences are consistently observed in identical phonetic environments. Finally, sound changes are formulated: language-specific rules which specify how the original common form changed in order to produce those observed in each descendent language.

Applying the comparative method to the Romance languages, we might find

In fact we will find that the correspondences are regular, once we observe that (2) is seen before a front vowel (i or e), while (3) is seen in other environments. Alternations within paradigms, such as It. /diko/ 'I say' vs. /ditSe/ 'says', will help us make and confirm such generalizations.

We may interpret these now-regular correspondences as indicating that an initial /s/ in the proto-language has been retained in all four languages, and likewise initial /k/ in Sard; but that /k/ changed to /s/ or /tS/ in the other languages in the environment of a front vowel.

We may interpret these now-regular correspondences as indicating that an initial /s/ in the proto-language has been retained in all four languages, and likewise initial /k/ in Sard; but that /k/ changed to /s/ or /tS/ in the other languages in the environment of a front vowel.

Actually, this process is iterative. For instance, at first glance we might think that German _haben_ and Latin _habere_ 'have' are obvious cognates. However, after noting the regular correspondence of German h to Latin c, we are forced to change our minds, and look to _capere_ 'seize' as a better cognate for _haben_.

Thus, similarity of words is only a clue, and perhaps a misleading one. Linguists conclude languages are related, and thus derive from a common ancestor, only if they find *regular* sound correspondences between them.

To complicate things, derivations may be obscured by irregular changes, such as dissimilation, borrowing, or analogical change. For instance, the normal development of Middle English _kyn_ is 'kine', but this word has been largely replaced by 'cows', formed from 'cow' (ME _cou_) on the analogy of word-pairs like stone : stones. Analogy often serves to reduce irregularities in a language (here, an unusual plural).

_Borrowing_ refers to taking words from other languages, as English has taken 'search' and 'garage' from French, 'paternal' from Latin, 'anger' from Old Norse, and 'tomato' from Nahuatl. How do we know that English doesn't derive from French or Nahuatl? The latter case is easy to eliminate: regular sound correspondences can't be set up between English and Nahuatl.

But English has borrowed so heavily from French that regular correspondences do occur. Here, however, we find that the French borrowings are thickest in government, legal, and military domains; while the basic vocabulary (which languages borrow less frequently) is more akin to German. Paradigmatic correspondences like sing/sang/sung vs. singen/sang/gesungen also help show that the Germanic words are inherited, the French ones borrowed.

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What is Noam Chomsky's transformational grammar all about?

1. The hypothesis that much of the structure of human language is inborn ("built-in") in the human brain, so that a baby learning to talk only has to learn the vocabulary and the structural "parameters" of his native language -- he doesn't have to learn how language works from scratch.


This is widely (but not universally) believed; the main evidence consists of:

• The fact that babies learn to talk remarkably well from what seems to be inadequate exposure to language; it can be shown in detail that babies acquire some rules of grammar that they could never have "learned" from what is available to them, if the structure of language were not partly built-in.
• The fact that the structure of language on different levels (vocabulary, ability to connect words, etc.) can be lost by injury to specific areas of the brain.
• The fact that there are unexpected structural similarities between all known languages.
For detailed exposition see Cook, CHOMSKY'S UNIVERSAL GRAMMAR (1988), Newmeyer, GRAMMATICAL THEORY: ITS LIMITS AND POSSIBILITIES, and Pinker, THE LANGUAGE INSTINCT (1994).
2. The hypothesis that to adequately describe the grammar of a human language, you have to give each sentence at least two different structures, called "deep structure" and "surface structure", together with rules called "transformations" that relate them.


This is hotly debated. Some theories of grammar use two levels and some don't. Chomsky's original monograph, SYNTACTIC STRUCTURES (1957), is still well worth reading; this is what it deals with.

3. Chomsky's name is associated with specific flavors of transformational grammar. The model elaborated over the last few years is called GB (government and binding) theory; however, Chomsky's 1992 paper on Minimalism contains significant departures from earlier work in GB.


Bill Turkel (bill@hivnet.ubc.ca) runs a mailing list on Minimalism; e-mail him for more information.

4. Some people think Chomsky is the source of the idea that grammar ought to be viewed with mathematical precision. (Thus there are occasional vehement anti-Chomsky polemics such as THE NEW GRAMMARIAN'S FUNERAL, which are really polemics against grammar per se.)

 

 

Although Chomsky contributed some valuable techniques, grammarians have always believed that grammar was a precise, mechanical thing. They are highly divided, however, on the nature and function of those mechanisms!

A dialect is any variety of a language spoken by a specific community of people. Most languages have many dialects.

Everyone speaks a dialect. In fact everyone speaks an idiolect, i.e., a personal language. (Your English language is not quite the same as my English language, though they are probably very, very close.)

A group of people with very similar idiolects are considered to be speaking the same dialect. Some dialects, such as Standard American English, are taught in schools and used widely around the world. Others are very localized.

Localized or uneducated dialects are not merely failed attempts to speak the standard language. William Labov and others have demonstrated, for example, that the speech of inner-city blacks has its own intricate grammar, quite different in some ways from that of Standard English.

It should be emphasized that linguists do not consider some dialects superior to others - though speakers of the language may do so; and linguists do study people's attitudes toward language, since these have a strong effect on the development of language.

Linguists call varieties of language "dialects" if the speakers can understand each other and "languages" if they can't. For example, Irish English and Southern American English are dialects of English, but English and German are different languages (though related).

This criterion is not always as easy to apply as it sounds. Intelligibility may vary with familiarity and interest, or may depend on the subject. A more serious problem is the dialect continuum: a chain of dialects such that any two adjoining dialects are mutually intelligible, but the dialects at the ends are not. Speakers of Belgian Dutch, for instance, can't understand Swiss German, but between them there lies a continuum of mutually intelligible dialects.

Sometimes the use of the terms "language" or "dialect" is politically motivated. Norwegian and Danish (being mutually intelligible) are dialects of the same language, but are considered separate languages because of their political independence. By contrast, Mandarin and Cantonese, which are mutually unintelligible, are often referred to as "dialects" of Chinese, due to the political and cultural unity of China, and because they share a common written language.

Because of such problems, some linguists reject the mutual intelligibility criterion; but they do not propose to return to arguments on political and cultural grounds. Instead, they prefer not to speak of dialects and languages at all, but only of different varieties, with varying degrees of mutual intelligibility.
 
 

In fact, however, there is no correlation between type or complexity of culture and any measure of language complexity. Peoples of very simple material culture, such as the Australian Aborigines, are often found to speak very complex languages.

Obviously, the size of the vocabulary and the variety and sophistication of literary forms will depend on the culture. The grammar of all languages, however, tends to be about equally complex - although the complexity may be found in different places. Latin, for instance, has a much richer system of inflections than English, but a less complicated syntax.

As David Crystal puts it, "All languages meet the social and psychological needs of their speakers, are equally deserving of scientific study, and can provide us with valuable information about human nature and society."

The only really simple languages are pidgins, which result when speakers of different languages come to live and work together. Vocabulary is drawn from one or both languages, and a very forgiving grammar devised. Grammars of pidgins from around the world have interesting similarities (e.g. they are likely to use repetition to express plurals).

A pidgin becomes a creole when children acquire it as a native language; as it evolves to meet the needs of a primary language, its vocabulary and grammar become much richer. If a pidgin is used over a long period (for example, Tok Pisin in Papua New Guinea), it may similarly develop into a more complex language known as an extended pidgin.

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What about artificial languages, such as Esperanto?

Later the focus shifted to languages based on existing languages, with a polyglot (usually European) vocabulary and a simplified grammar, whose purpose was to facilitate international communication. Johann Schleyer's Volapük (1880) was the first to achieve success; its name is based on English ("world-speech"), and reflects Schleyer's notions of phonetic simplicity.

It was soon eclipsed by Ludwig Zamenhof's Esperanto (1887), whose grammar was simpler and its vocabulary more recognizable. Esperanto has remained the most successful and best-known artificial language, with a million or more speakers and a voluminous literature; children of Esperantists have even learned it as a native language.

Its relative success hasn't prevented the appearance of new proposals, such as Ido, Interlingua, Occidental, and Novial. There have also been attempts to simplify Latin (Latino Sine Flexione, 1903) and English (Basic English, 1930) for international use. The recent Loglan and Lojban, based on predicate logic, may represent a revival of a priori language construction.

See also Andrew Large, THE ARTIFICIAL LANGUAGE MOVEMENT (1985); Mario Pei, ONE LANGUAGE FOR THE WORLD; Detlev Blanke, INTERNATIONALE PLANSPRACHEN (in German).

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What about those Eskimo words for snow? (and other myths about language)

This story is constantly being repeated, with various numbers given, despite the fact that it has no basis at all. No one who repeats this pseudo-factoid can list the hundreds of words for you, or even cite a work that does. They just heard it somewhere.

The anthropologist Laura Martin has traced the development of this myth (including the steady growth in the number of words claimed). Geoffrey Pullum summarizes her report in THE GREAT ESKIMO VOCABULARY HOAX (1991).

How many words are there really? Well, the Yup'ik language in particular has about two dozen roots describing snow or things related to snow. This is not particularly significant; English can amass about the same total: snow, sleet, slush, blizzard, flurry, avalanche, powder, hardpack, snowball, snowman, and other derivatives.

The Yup'ik total could be greatly expanded by other derived words, since the Inuit languages can form hundreds of words from a single root. But this is true of all words in the language (and indeed of all agglutinative languages), not just the words for snow.

"There's a town in Appalachia that speaks pure Elizabethan English."

There isn't. All languages, everywhere, are constantly changing. Some areas speak more conservative dialects, but we know of no case where people speak exactly as their ancestors spoke centuries ago.

Of course, ancient languages are sometimes revived; biblical Hebrew has been revived (with some modifications) in modern Israel; and there's a village in India in which Sanskrit is being taught as an everyday language. But these are conscious revivals of languages which have otherwise died out in everyday use, not survivals of living languages.

"Chinese characters directly represent ideas, not spoken words."

Westerners have been taken by this notion for centuries, ever since missionaries started describing the Chinese writing system. However, it's quite false. Chinese characters represent specific Chinese words.

(To be precise, almost all characters represent a particular syllable with a particular meaning; about 10% however represent one syllable of a particular two-syllable word.)

The vast majority of characters consist of a phonetic giving the approximate pronunciation of the word, plus a signific giving a clue to its meaning (thus distinguishing different syllables having different meanings). As an added difficulty, many of the phonetics are no longer helpful, because of sound changes since the characters were devised, over 2000 years ago. However, it is estimated that 60% of the phonetics still give useful information about the character's pronunciation.

To be sure, Japanese (among other languages) uses Chinese characters too, and it is a very different language from Chinese. However, we must look at exactly how the Japanese use the Chinese characters. Generally they borrowed both the characters and the words represented; it's rather as if when we borrowed words like psychology from Greek, we wrote them in the Greek alphabet. Native Japanese words are also written using the Chinese characters for the closest Chinese words: if the Japanese word overlaps several Chinese words, different characters must be written in different contexts, according to the meanings in Chinese.

A good demythologizing of common notions about Chinese writing is found in THE CHINESE LANGUAGE: FACT AND FANTASY, by John DeFrancis (1984).

"German lost out to English as the US's official language by 1 vote."

This entertaining story is also told of Greek, Latin, and even Hebrew.

There was never any such vote. Dennis Baron, in THE ENGLISH ONLY QUESTION (1990), thinks the legend may have originated with a 1795 vote concerning a proposal to publish federal laws in German as well as English. At one point a motion to table discussion (rather than referring the matter back to committee) was defeated 41-40. The proposal was eventually defeated.

"Sign language isn't really a language."
"ASL is a gestural version of English."

Sign languages are true languages, with vocabularies of thousands of words, and grammars as complex and sophisticated as those of any other language, though with fascinating differences from speech. If you think they are merely pantomime, try watching a mathematics lecture, a poetry reading, or a religious service conducted in Sign, and see how much you understand.

ASL (American Sign Language) is not an invented system like Esperanto; it developed gradually and naturally among the Deaf. It has no particular relation to English; the best demonstration of this is that it is quite different from British Sign. Curiously enough, it is most closely related to French Sign Language, due to the influence of Laurent Clerc, who came from Paris in 1817 to be the first teacher of the Deaf in the US.

ASL is not to be confused with Signed English, which is a word-for-word signed equivalent of English. Deaf people tend to find it tiring, because its grammar, like that of spoken languages, is linear, while that of ASL is primarily spatial.

For more on Sign and the Deaf community, see Oliver Sacks' SEEING VOICES (1989), or Harlan Lane, WHEN THE MIND HEARS.

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About 6,000 and they are swiftly disappearing. For a complete listing of who speaks what and where, see http://www.sil.org/linguistics    and click on the "Ethnologue" option. For additional information, see my homepage at http://faculty.ed.umuc.edu/~jmatthew. Click on the "articles" option towards the bottom of the page and see articles marked "Minority and Endangered Languages". Also, from the homepage, click on the option that says "Syllabus and Readings from a recent six-week seminar on Minority and Endangered Languages"--or click here.