Introduction of language relations.

1. TRAD101
Languages & Cultures of East
Discussion Questions
by Ke Peng

2. Discussion Questions
Based on Reading 1 and 2
1. The authors mention that languages are dying out.
A. Should they be preserved?
B. Does it matter if they go extinct?
C. If they go extinct what happens to the cultures?
D. What kinds of things are being done to preserve languages?
2. Have you ever studied another language?
A. Was it difficult?
B. Did it have a different word order than your native language?
C. What kinds of things did you find difficult?
3. How many languages are there in the world? Why is
this hard to count?

3. Discussion Questions
Based on Reading 1 and 2
3. How many languages are there in the world? Why is
this hard to count?
A. Many parts of the world are insufficiently studied from a
linguistic viewpoint.
B. In many cases, it is extremely difficult to distinguish between
languages and dialects of the same language.
C. Many languages are on the verge of extinction.
• Native American languages
• Australian aboriginal languages
• Ainu (virtually extinct)
• 1/2 of the world’s languages: Extinct in the next 100 years while only 10% of them have been
documented.
4. How do Pidgin/Creole count?

4. Language Overview
Relationships between languages

5. Guess which country has the
biggest number of speakers?

6. Table 1. Estimates of numbers of native speakers globally
in 1995 for the top 10 Languages
(D. Graddol, The future of English? British Council, London, 1997)

7. Table 2. Estimates of numbers of native speakers globally
aged 15 to 24 in 2050
(D. Graddol, The future of English? British Council, London, 1997)

8. The changing percentage of the world’s population
speaking English, Spanish, Hindi/Urdu, and Arabic
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/reprint/303/5662/1329.pdf

9. Percentage of European Union populations claiming that
they speak English (European Communication, Standard
Eurobarometer 52, 2000)

10. • http://www.ethnologue.com/show_map.asp?name=World&seq=10

11. • How does a language come into being?
• How can we tell if two languages
belong to the same language family?

12. Dialect chain
a ~ h = form a dialect chain
a X
b
c
d Y
e
Mediterranean Sea f
g
h
Other examples:
High German—Central German—Low German
Dutch—German dialect complex

13. Process of Dialect Chain
• Imagine that there are
variations on an Island A
Island A, but people ☺☺☺
can understand
each other
• One day, some Island A Island B
people move to ☺☺☺
Island B.

14. Process of Dialect Chain
• At the beginning they
can still understand
each other, but as the
contact gradually Island Island
diminish, Group A A B
started to make up ☻☻☻
new words and
pronounce words
slightly differently
than before. Same
for Group B

15. Process of Dialect Chain
• If the contact
gradually diminish,
Group A would not be Island Island
able to understand A B
what Group B says.
Their speech varieties
became mutually
unintelligible.

16. Result of Dialect Chain
• A birth of different languages as a result of
dialect chain process (e.g., Austronesian)
• New languages are daughter languages of
proto ABCD & sister languages to each other.
Proto ABCD
Lg A Lg B Lg C Lg D
Island Island Island Island
A B C D
☺☺☺ ☻☻☻

17. Mutual intelligibility—a matter of degree
Influence by several factors
• Shared vocabulary & forms
• Familiarity
• Social & psychological factors
– Easier to understand when you want to
understand

18. Language Families
• Family Tree Model
– Similarities among languages are due to a
genetic relationship among those languages.
English man
Germanic German Mann
Dutch man
We can reconstruct the proto-language (hypothetical
grandmother language) from which the related
languages are derived.

19. Problems in the family tree model
• Unreal sudden and decisive split of
languages in the tree
– Languages usually tend to change gradually.
• Cannot account for linguistic similarities
without necessarily being related.

20. What are the possible reasons
for the similarities between
languages?

21. Explanations for similarities among
languages
1. Genetic relationship
Indo-European
English (Germanic)Latin-base (Romance)
1. foot pedometer, pedal, podiatrist
2. father petrineal
3. three triangle, tripod
4. tooth dental, orthodontist
5. heart cardiac, cardiology

22. 2. Chance
(similarities btwn languages just by chance)
e.g) English Mbabaram (Australian)
dog dog
German Zuni
nass nas 'wet'
Sanskrit Malay
dva dua 'two'

23. 3. Language Universals
• The sound ma in ‘mother’
– English ‘mother’ Chinese ‘ma’ Sanskrit ‘mata’
– Onomatopoeia
English: English:
cock-a-doodle-doo tik-tock ding-dong
German: Malay:
kikariki tik, tuk ting, tong
Japanese:
kokekokko

24. 3. Language Universals
• Certain language features frequently co-occur
– if a language is SOV, postpositions rather than
prepositions
• ‘the table on’
• Word order typology
S = Subject, O= Object, V = Verb
1. SOV (Japanese, Korean) most frequent
2. SVO (English, Chinese) next most frequent
3. VSO (Welsh, Samoan) less frequent
Other orders are less common.

25. 4. Borrowing
• English
French period William the Conqueror 1066
AD (Norman French) for almost 300 years.
(1362, English reestablished as language of
courts)
1. Government
2. Law
3. Military
4. Religion
5. Meat on the table

26. 4. Borrowing
• Chinese, Thai, Vietnamese
– shared features:
• tones
• mono-syllabic
• simple syllable structure
• lexical items
– result of Chinese cultural influence
– not because they are genetically related