Week 2: Classifying Language
Classifying Language Geneological classification: (Proto-Indoeuropean - Indoeuropean - Romance Languages) We cannot purely use this method of classification as some languages escape it. E.g Albanian has some features that belong to the Indoeuropean family and other features that belong to other language families Morphological Classification: Morpheme = the smallest functioning unit in the composition of words Isolating Languages In which each grammatical category is represented by a separate word. 1 word = 1 separate function wo ai ni = I love you ni ai wo = you love me Chinese and Vietnamese are isolating languages Tonal Languages Some isolating languages are tonal. This means that the meaning of the word changes when it is pronounced differently Agglutinating Languages In which words are easily divided into separate segments with separate grammatical functions E.g from Turkish 'Ev' = home and 'in' = genitive so 'evin' = of the home The Swahili Language: mtot...