Language Families

Objectives
• Definition of language family

• Indo-European-languages

• Proto-Indo-European-languages
• Language may refer either to the specifically human
capacity for acquiring and using complex systems of
communication, or to a specific instance of such a
system of complex communication.

• Cuneiform is the first known form of written language,

but spoken language predates writing by at least tens of
thousands of years.

• Languages, understood as the particular set of speech

norms of a particular community, are also a part of the
larger culture of the community that speak them.
Introduction to Language
Families
 language family
• A language family is group of languages related through
descent from a common ancestor, called the proto-language of
that family.
• The term 'family' comes from the tree model of language
origination in historical linguistics, which makes use of a
metaphor comparing languages to people in a biological family
tree or in a subsequent modification to species in a
phylogenetic tree of evolutionary taxonomy.
• A family is a monogenetic unit; that is, all its members derive
from a common ancestor, and all attested descendants of that
ancestor are included in the family.
• The term 'family' reflects the tree model of language
origination in historical linguistics, which makes use of
a metaphor comparing language.
• . Estimates of the number of living languages vary from 5,000
to 8,000, living human languages. A "living language" is
simply one that is used as the primary form of
communication of a group of people. There are also many
dead and extinct languages, as well as some that are still

insufficienty studied to be classified

 language family
• A language family is a set
of languages deriving from a common ancestor
or "parent."
• Languages with a significant number of
common features in phonology, morphology
and syntax are said to belong to
the same language family. Subdivisions of a
language family are called "branches."
•
• It is estimated that there are more than 250
established language families in the world, and
over 6,800 distinct languages, many of which
are threatened or endangered.
• The number of languages that make up
a language family varies greatly.
• There are many languages that do not appear to
be related to any other. These single-member
language families are referred to as language
isolates.
– Language families can be divided into smaller
phylogenetic units, conventionally referred to as
branches of the family because the history of a
language family is often represented as a tree diagram.

• The term superfamily is sometimes applied to propose

groupings of language families whose status as phylogenetic
units is generally considered to be unsubstantiated by accepted
historical linguistic methods.

• Some closely knit language families, and many branches within

larger families, take the form of dialect continua, in which there
are no clear-cut borders that make it possible to unequivocally
identify, define, or count individual languages within the
family.
• However, when the differences between the speech of
different regions at the extremes of the continuum are
so great that there is no mutual intelligibility between
them, the continuum cannot meaningfully be seen as a
single language.
• The common ancestor of a language family is seldom
known directly, since most languages have a relatively
short recorded history.
• However, it is possible to recover many features of a
proto-language by applying the comparative method
—a reconstructive procedure worked out by 19th
century linguist August Schleicher.
 History
:
• Filippo Sassetti: (1540–1588) was
a traveller and merchant from a
long-established Florentine
mercantile family, who was born in
Florence in 1540.
• he travelled to the Indian
subcontinent, reaching Cochin in
November 1583, and remained in
Cochin and Goa and the Malabar
coast that joins the two, until his
death.
• In India he noted that a number of
words in sanskrit seemd related to
italian words.
 History
:
• Joseph Justus Scaliger: (August 1540 –
21 January 1609) was a French religious
leader and scholar.
• He devided languages of Europe into 4
types, named after their words for
‘’God’’:
• 1. Deus (i.e Romance Languages)
• 2. Gott (i.e Germanic Languages)
• 3 Theos (i.e Greek)
• 4 Bog (i.e Slavic languages)
 History
:
• Sir William Jones: he is
generally regarded as father of
Historical Linguistics , he
spoke
13 languages fluently plus he
knew 28 others well so he was
Hyperpolyglot , he is founder
of Asiatic society in calcutta .
• And in 1786 he gave a talk to a
small group about sanskrit
and some european
languages that later became
an important work in
linguistics
 History
• Rasmus Rask: (22 November :1787 – 14 November 1832) was
a Danish linguist and philologist. He wrote several grammars
and worked on comparative phonology and morphology.
 Structure of a
• Language families can befamily
divided into smaller phylogenetic
units, which referred to as branches of the family because the
history of a language family is often represented as a tree
diagram.
‘’For example, the Celtic, Germanic, Slavic, Romance, and Indo-Iranian language families
are branches of a larger Indo-European language family’’
 Dialect Continuum
• dialect continuum or dialect area was defined by Leonard
Bloomfield as a range of dialects spoken across some
geographical area that differ only slightly between neighboring
areas, but as one travels in any direction, the differences
accumulate in such a way that dialects from opposite ends of
the continuum are no longer mutually intelligible. For example
chinese,arabic..etc langauges.
• The varieties of Chinese are highly divergent, and are
comparable to a language family like that of the Romance
languages. However, all the variants more or less share a
common written language, though there are vernacular
variations in vocabulary, grammar, and orthography.
 Isolates
• language isolate, in the absolute sense, is a natural language
with no demonstrable genealogical (or "genetic") relationship
with other languages, one that has not been demonstrated to
descend from an ancestor common with any other language.
For example korean,sumerian..etc.
 Proto-languages
• The common ancestor of a language family is seldom known
directly since most languages have a relatively short recorded
history. However, it is possible to recover many features of a
proto-language by applying the comparative method, a
reconstructive procedure worked out by 19th century linguist
August Schleicher.
 August Schleicher
• August Schleicher (19 February 1821 – 6 December 1868) was a
German linguist. His great work was A Compendium of the
Comparative Grammar of the Indo- European Languages, in
which he attempted to reconstruct the Proto-Indo- European
language. To show how Indo-European might have looked, he
created a short tale, Schleicher's fable, to exemplify the
reconstructed vocabulary and aspects of Indo-European society
inferred from it.
Indo-European languages
• A family of languages (including most of
the languages spoken in Europe, India, and
Iran) descended from a common tongue
spoken in the third millennium B.C. by an
agricultural people originating in
southeastern Europe.
The Indo-European homeland
• Home of Indo-European
– Area between northern Europe and
southern Russia
– Early Indo-Europeans have been
identified with the Kurgan culture
– Lived northwest of the Caucasus and
north of the Caspian Sea
– Domesticated cattle for milk, meat, and
transportation
– Combined farming with herding
– Were a mobile people, used 4-wheeled
wagons
– Built fortified palaces on hilltops
– Had a stratified society, with warrior
nobility and laboring class
– Believed in life after death, constructed
elaborate burial sites
– Expanded into the Balkans and northern
Europe, then Iran, Anatolia, and southern
Europe
• Branches of Indo-European (IE) include
Indo-Iranian (Sanskrit and the Iranian
languages), Greek, Italic (Latin and related
languages), Celtic, Germanic (which
includes English), Armenian, Balto-Slavic,
Albanian, Anatolian, and Tocharian.
 Proto-Indo-European
Languages
• PIE was the first proposed proto-
language to be widely accepted by linguists
The Proto-Indo-European
language (PIE).
• The term proto-language means an
ancient parent language from which a group
of related languages have descended
through slow modification.:
• PIE are languages thus brought into relationship by
descent or progressive differentiation from a parent speech
are conveniently called a family of languages. The
surviving languages show various degrees of similarity to
one another, the similarity bearing a more or less direct
relationship to their geographical distribution.
Proto-Indo-European
languages
• It can be said that Proto-Indo-European
refers to English--along with a whole host
of languages spoken in Europe, India, and
the Middle East.
 PIE

The languages thus brought into

relationship by descent or
progressive differentiation
from a parent speech are
conveniently called a family of
languages.
Proposed geographic location of original
home of the Proto-Indo-European tribes
• They accordingly fall into eleven principal
groups: Indian, Iranian, Armenian,
Hellenic,
Albanian, Italic, Balto-Slavic, Germanic,
Celtic, Hittite, and Tocharian.
• It is by far the most well-understood of all
proto-languages of its age.
• Therefore, English is a Germanic language
which belongs to the Indo-European
languages.
 Indo-Iranian
• One of the oldest languages on record
• Indic dialects
– Vedic hymns (written in early Sanskrit) date from at least 1000 B.C.
– Classical Sanskrit appeared about 500 B.C.
• Early grammarians formulated rules for its use
• Sanskrit means ‘well-made’ or ‘perfected’
• Panini wrote a grammar of Sanskrit in 4th century B.C. still admirable
today
• Bengali, Hindi, and Urdu developed from Prakrits (natural dialects)
• Romany (Gypsy) contains loan words from other languages
• Iranic dialects
• Old Persian is the ancestor of Modern Iranian
• Avestan is a sacred language preserved in the Avesta (a religious book)
 Italic
• Latin was the main language in ancient Italy
– Spread influence to Gaul, Spain, and other countries
– Became a koine
– Survives in Romance languages
• Portuguese, Spanish, French, Italian, Romanian
– Romance languages developed from Vulgar Latin
• Spoken by common people
• Dialect of Paris, Picard, became standard French
• Dialect of the kingdom of Castile became standard Spanish
• Dialect of Tuscany became standard Italian
 Celtic
• Used to be spoken in central & western Europe before Christian era
• Gaulish was spoken in present day France
• Brythonic threatened by arrival of Angles, Saxons, and Jutes
• Welsh and Breton are closely related
• Cornish, no native speakers since 19th century
• Goidelic (Gaelic) survived in Scots Gaelic, Manx, and Irish Gaelic
 Germanic
• Includes English
• Proto-Germanic was not recorded, only spoken
• Spread over a large area, developed marked dialectal differences
– North Germanic
– Danish, Swedish, Norwegian, Icelandic, Faeroese
– West Germanic
– High German, Low German (Dutch, Flemish, Afrikaans), Frisian,
English
– Modern German and Yiddish developed from High German
– Afrikaans developed from Dutch spoken in South Africa
– East Germanic
• Gothic
• Earliest of Germanic languages
• No modern Germanic languages
developed from Gothic
 Hellenic
• Ancient Hellenic dialects
– Mycenaean -Aeolic
– Doric -Attic-Ionic
• Attic became the basis of Greek because it
was the dialect of Athens.
– The koine (common dialect which
ultimately dominated other Hellenic
dialects
 Exercise
• What is a language family?

• What are the branches of the PIE?

• Languages that have no common features

among each other are known as………….
• Using the Proto- Indo-European family map
trace the history of the Modern English
language.

•
 Suggested Topics for research
• Language Families.
• The Endo-European Languages
• French Influences on the English Language
• Latin and Greek Influences on the English
Language
• The Anglo-Saxon Period(Dua and Sheema)
• The Vikings Period(Haleema and Shaista)
• Old English Literature: Characteristics & a
model: Beowulf (Seher and Hijab)
• Middle English Literature: Characteristics
& a model: The Canterbury Tales(rubina
and javeria)
• Modern English literature: Characteristics
and a model .(kubra and raheema)
• The Differences Between the Old English
and the Middle English Phonological
Systems.(laiqa and qurat ul ain)
• The Development of the Noun System of
the English Language(Laraib and parveen)
• The Development of the Verb System of the
English Language(mahnoor,nayab and
mashal)
•
• The Distinctive Features of Old English
Morphology and Syntax. (areeba and zakia)

• The Distinctive Features of Middle English

Morphology and Syntax. (irum and asma)
• The Differences Between Middle English
and Modern English Morphology.(adeela
and zobia)
• The Differences Between Middle English
and Modern English Syntax and
morphology.(aleesha and zeenat)
• Differences Between British and American
English