Language family

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See also: List of language families

Principal language families of the world (and in some cases geographic groups of families). For greater detail, see Distribution of languages in the world.

A language family is a group of languages related through descent from a common ancestor, called the protolanguage 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 aphylogenetic tree of evolutionary taxonomy. No actual biological relationship between speakers is implied by the metaphor. As of early 2009, SIL Ethnologue catalogued 6,909 living human languages.[1] A "living language" is simply one that is widely used as a primary form of communication by a specific group of living people. The exact number of known living languages varies from 5,000 to 10,000, depending generally on the precision of one's definition of "language", and in particular on how one classifies dialects. There are also many dead and extinct languages. Membership of languages in the same language family is established by comparative linguistics. Daughter languages are said to have a genetic or genealogical relationship; the former term is more modern, while the latter is more traditional.[2] The evidence of linguisticrelationship is found in observable shared characteristics that are not attributed to borrowing. Genealogically related languages present shared retentions, that is, features of the proto-language (or reflexes of such features) that cannot be explained by chance or borrowing(convergence). Membership in a branch or group within a language family is established by shared innovations, that is, common features of those languages that are not found in the common ancestor of the

entire family. For example, Germanic languages are "Germanic" in that they share vocabulary and grammatical features that are not believed to have been present in the Proto-Indo-European language. These features are believed to be innovations that took place in Proto-Germanic, a descendant of Proto-Indo-European that was the source of all Germanic languages.

Contents
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1 Structure of a family o o 1.1 Dialect continua 1.2 Proto-languages

2 Other classifications of languages o o o 2.1 Isolate 2.2 Sprachbund 2.3 Contact languages

3 See also 4 Notes 5 Further reading 6 External links

Structure of a family[edit source]

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. A family is a monophyletic unit; that is, all its members derive from a common ancestor, and all attested descendants of that ancestor are included in the family. (In this way, the termfamily is analogous to the biological term clade.) Some taxonomists restrict the term family to a certain level, but there is little consensus in how to do so. Those who affix such labels also subdivide branches into groups, and groups into complexes. A top-level (largest) family is often called a phylum or stock. The term superfamily is sometimes applied to proposed groupings of language families whose status as phylogenetic units is generally considered to be unsubstantiated by accepted historical linguistic methods. For example, the Celtic, the Germanic, Slavic, Romance, and Indo-Iranian language families are branches of a larger Indo-European language family. There is a remarkably similar pattern shown by the linguistic tree and the genetic tree of human ancestry[3] that was verified statistically.[4] Languages interpreted in terms of the putative phylogenetic tree of human languages are transmitted to a great extent vertically (i.e., by ancestry) as opposed to horizontally (i.e., by spatial diffusion).[5]

Dialect continua[edit source]

Main article: Dialect continuum 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 nomutual intelligibility between them, the continuum cannot meaningfully be seen as a single language. A speech variety may also be considered either a language or a dialect depending on social or political considerations, as in the case of Hindi and Urdu within Hindustani. Thus different sources give sometimes wildly different accounts of the number of languages within a family. Classifications of the Japonic family, for example, range from one language (a language isolate) to nearly twenty.

Proto-languages[edit source]
Main article: Proto-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 methoda reconstructive procedure worked out by 19th century linguist August Schleicher. This can demonstrate the validity of many of the proposed families in the list of language families. For example, the reconstructible common ancestor of the Indo-European language family is called Proto-Indo-European. Proto-Indo-European is not attested by written records, since it was conjectured to be spoken before the invention of writing. Sometimes, however, a proto-language can be identified with a historically known language. For instance, dialects of Old Norse are the proto-language of Norwegian, Swedish, Danish, Faroeseand Icelandic. Likewise, the Appendix Probi depicts Proto-Romance, a language almost unattested due to the prestige of Classical Latin, a highly stylised literary register not representative of the speech of ordinary people.

Other classifications of languages[edit source]

This section does not cite any references or sources. Please help improve this section by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (September 2012)

Isolate[edit source]
Main article: Language isolate Most of the world's languages are known to belong to language families. Those that have no known relatives (or for which family relationships are only tentatively proposed) are called language isolates, which can be

thought of as minimal language families. An example is Basque. In general, it is assumed that language isolates have relatives, but at a time depth too great for linguistic comparison to recover them. Languages that cannot be reliably classified into any family are known as language isolates. A language isolated in its own branch within a family, such as Armenian within Indo-European, is often also called an isolate, but the meaning of isolate in such cases is usually clarified. For instance, Armenian may be referred to as an Indo-European isolate. By contrast, so far as is known, theBasque language is an absolute isolate: It has not been shown to be related to any other language despite numerous attempts, though it has been influenced by neighboring Romance languages. A language may be said to be an isolate currently but not historically if related but now extinct relatives are attested. The Aquitanian language, spoken in Roman times, may have been an ancestor of Basque, but it could also have been a sister language to its ancestor. In the latter case, it would make Basque and Aquitanian form a small family together (ancestors are generally not considered to be distinct languages for this purpose).

Sprachbund[edit source]
Main article: Sprachbund Shared innovations, acquired by borrowing or other means, are not considered genetic and have no bearing with the language family concept. It has been asserted, for example, that many of the more striking features shared by Italic languages (Latin, Oscan, Umbrian, etc.) might well be "areal features". However, very similarlooking alterations in the systems of long vowels in the West Germanic languages greatly postdate any possible notion of a proto-language innovation (and cannot readily be regarded as "areal", either, since English and continental West Germanic were not a linguistic area). In a similar vein, there are many similar unique innovations in Germanic, Baltic and Slavic that are far more likely to be areal features than traceable to a common proto-language. But legitimate uncertainty about whether shared innovations are areal features, coincidence, or inheritance from a common ancestor, leads to disagreement over the proper subdivisions of any large language family. A sprachbund is a geographic area having several languages that feature common linguistic structures. The similarities between those languages are caused by language contact, not by chance or common origin, and are not recognized as criteria that define a language family. An example of a sprachbund would be the Indian Subcontinent.

Contact languages[edit source]

Main articles: Mixed language and Creole language The concept of language families is based on the historical observation that languages develop dialects, which over time may diverge into distinct languages. However, linguistic ancestry is less clear-cut than familiar biological ancestry, in which species do not crossbreed. It is more like the evolution of microbes, with

extensive lateral gene transfer: Quite distantly related languages may affect each other through language contact, which in extreme cases may lead to languages with no single ancestor, whether they be creoles or mixed languages. In addition, a number of sign languages have developed in isolation and appear to have no relatives at all. Nonetheless, such cases are relatively rare and most well-attested languages can be unambiguously classified as belonging to one language family or another.

See also[edit source]

Background colors used on Wikipedia for various language families and groups
Khoisan (areal) Indo-European IberoUralic Dravidian Altaic? Paleosiberian Caucasian (areal) Sino-Tibetan Hmong Tai Austroasiatic Austronesian Papuan Australian Mien Kadai (areal) (areal) EskimoAleut Na-Den (& Den-Yeniseian) American (areal) Creole/Pidgin/Mixed language sign language constructed unclassified isolate language Afro-Asiatic Nilo-Saharan? NigerCongo

Constructed language Endangered language Extinct language Global language system ISO 639-5 Linguist List List of language families List of languages by number of native speakers Proto-language Tree model

Notes[edit source]
1. ^ "Ethnologue: Languages of the world, Sixteenth edition". Retrieved 8 June 2010, ISBN 978-155671-216-6 2. ^ Mller, Max (1862). Lectures on the science of language: delivered at the Royal institution of Great Britain in April, May and June, 1861 (3rd ed.). London: Longman, Green, Longman and

Roberts. p. 216. "The genealogical classification of the Aryan languages was founded, as we saw, on a close comparison of the grammatical characteristics of each;...." 3. ^ Henn, B. M.; Cavalli-Sforza, L. L.; Feldman, M. W. (17 October 2012). "The great human expansion". Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 109 (44): 17758 17764. Bibcode:2012PNAS..10917758H. doi:10.1073/pnas.1212380109. PMC 3497766. 4. ^ Sforza, LL; Minch; Mountain; Minch, E; Mountain, JL (1992 Jun 15). "Coevolution of genes and languages revisited". Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 89 (12): 5620 4. Bibcode:1992PNAS...89.5620C. doi:10.1073/pnas.89.12.5620. PMC 49344. PMID 1608971. 5. ^ Gell-Mann, M.; Ruhlen, M. (10 October 2011). "The origin and evolution of word order". Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 108 (42): 17290 17295. Bibcode:2011PNAS..10817290G.doi:10.1073/pnas.1113716108.

Further reading[edit source]

Boas, Franz (1911). Handbook of American Indian languages. Bureau of American Ethnology, Bulletin 40. Volume 1. Washington: Smithsonian Institution, Bureau of American Ethnology. ISBN 08032-5017-7. Boas, Franz. (1922). Handbook of American Indian languages (Vol. 2). Bureau of American Ethnology, Bulletin 40. Washington: Government Print Office (Smithsonian Institution, Bureau of American Ethnology). Boas, Franz. (1933). Handbook of American Indian languages (Vol. 3). Native American legal materials collection, title 1227. Glckstadt: J.J. Augustin. Campbell, Lyle. (1997). American Indian languages: The historical linguistics of Native America . New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-509427-1. Campbell, Lyle; & Mithun, Marianne (Eds.). (1979). The languages of native America: Historical and comparative assessment. Austin: University of Texas Press. Goddard, Ives (Ed.). (1996). Languages. Handbook of North American Indians (W. C. Sturtevant, General Ed.) (Vol. 17). Washington, D. C.: Smithsonian Institution. ISBN 0-16-048774-9. Goddard, Ives. (1999). Native languages and language families of North America (rev. and enlarged ed. with additions and corrections). [Map]. Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press (Smithsonian Institution). (Updated version of the map in Goddard 1996). ISBN 0-8032-9271-6. Gordon, Raymond G., Jr. (Ed.). (2005). Ethnologue: Languages of the world (15th ed.). Dallas, TX: SIL International. ISBN 1-55671-159-X. (Online version: http://www.ethnologue.com). Greenberg, Joseph H. (1966). The Languages of Africa (2nd ed.). Bloomington: Indiana University.

Harrison, K. David. (2007) When Languages Die: The Extinction of the World's Languages and the Erosion of Human Knowledge. New York and London: Oxford University Press.

Mithun, Marianne. (1999). The languages of Native North America. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-23228-7 (hbk); ISBN 0-521-29875-X.

Ross, Malcom. (2005). Pronouns as a preliminary diagnostic for grouping Papuan languages. In: Andrew Pawley, Robert Attenborough, Robin Hide and Jack Golson, eds, Papuan pasts: cultural, linguistic and biological histories of Papuan-speaking peoples (PDF)

Ruhlen, Merritt. (1987). A guide to the world's languages. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Sturtevant, William C. (Ed.). (1978present). Handbook of North American Indians (Vol. 120). Washington, D. C.: Smithsonian Institution. (Vols. 13, 16, 1820 not yet published).

Voegelin, C. F.; & Voegelin, F. M. (1977). Classification and index of the world's languages. New York: Elsevier.

External links[edit source]

Ethnologue The Multitree Project Lenguas del mundo (World Languages) Comparative Swadesh list tables of various language families (from Wiktionary)