There are 6000+ languages in the world, and many are at the verge of extinction. Linguists have provided classifications of languages for a long time. What are the criteria for building language families?
Interesting question, Michael.
I have always been interested in this. Over the past century, science has presented a large scheme according to which languages were listed under such broad groups as Indo-European as well as such small groups as Finno-Ugric (considering the less publicized challenges to this theory as well) and many others of course. Aharon Dolgopolski's work on Nostratic languages is interesting also -- it considers the root of words as the foundation for relationships, but you would have to read the book to get the most out of his theory. A good decade ago, I came across the e-MELD project site: http://xml.coverpages.org/E-MELD-Workshop-Paper2001.html. You may also find more information at http://www.informationr.net/ir/9-3/paper176.html and http://xml.coverpages.org/aristar-expl2000.pdf.
Best regards,
Arjun
There are many criteria, but discoveries were not made at one point in time - discoveries of language families happened over a protracted period. Another key metric that may have a bearing on this is Linguistic distance which is the measure of the dissimilarity of languages or how different one language or dialect is from another in multiple dimensions such as vocabulary, grammar, pronunciation, script and phonetic inventories, and in the recent past, many formal approaches have been proposed to measure this distance such as Levenshtein distance (LD) and the approach proposed by Chiswick and Miller in 1999. Linguistic inequality is another measure that may come into play here, and this hypothesis that that different languages may be in different states of evolution. A dialect which includes both formal and written dialects or unwritten dialects, must likewise be distinguished from a full-fledged language.
Thanks a lot for your links and keywords (+ researchers), Arjun and Sujay. I'll have a look on this soon.
We've harnessed one of the Levenshtein's algorithms for our name matching projects, and it's quite obvious that we can use it also for comparing source and target vocabularies (say, the first 1,000 words most used in the source language compared to the target language).
Grammar seems to be a more tricky component to measure.
The theory of Indo-European languages group is not as popular as when first proposed.
If you take Greek for example, there are no similarities with other original languages that was supposed to have originated from. The current theory is that Greek was created in place and did not come from India, etc
Many new ideas have surfaced recently linking languages with people who have travelled. For example, ancient Greek has been linked to South and North American aboriginal languages. Similarity in words, in grammar, construction of words with "root" words, coupled with similar customs, appearance and a common passion for freedom.
The Basque language has too many similarities with the Ainu of Japan to be a coincidence as is the Pacific Island countries languages to ancient Greek.
All these may sound outrageous, but a comparison of dictionaries gives linguists material for further examination.
I tried to write an article about the above in a popular Greek newspaper and they dismissed it because I had no published references! I guess no one has thought of studying these similarities which are self-explanatory to me.
Recently, a Greek friend arrived in Canada to look for work. Wherever she applied she was encouraged to stress that she is "aboriginal" in which case she would have a better chance of getting the job being a minority person. Of course, she was astounded that she was taken for a Canadian aboriginal!!
The theory of Indo-European languages group is not as popular as when first proposed.
If you take Greek for example, there are no similarities with other original languages that was supposed to have originated from. The current theory is that Greek was created in place and did not come from India, etc
Many new ideas have surfaced recently linking languages with people who have travelled. For example, ancient Greek has been linked to South and North American aboriginal languages. Similarity in words, in grammar, construction of words with "root" words, coupled with similar customs, appearance and a common passion for freedom.
The Basque language has too many similarities with the Ainu of Japan to be a coincidence as is the Pacific Island countries languages to ancient Greek.
All these may sound outrageous, but a comparison of dictionaries gives linguists material for further examination.
I tried to write an article about the above in a popular Greek newspaper and they dismissed it because I had no published references! I guess no one has thought of studying these similarities which are self-explanatory to me.
Recently, a Greek friend arrived in Canada to look for work. Wherever she applied she was encouraged to stress that she is "aboriginal" in which case she would have a better chance of getting the job being a minority person. Of course, she was astounded that she was taken for a Canadian aboriginal!!
The theory of Indo-European languages group is not as popular as when first proposed.
If you take Greek for example, there are no similarities with other original languages that was supposed to have originated from. The current theory is that Greek was created in place and did not come from India, etc
Many new ideas have surfaced recently linking languages with people who have travelled. For example, ancient Greek has been linked to South and North American aboriginal languages. Similarity in words, in grammar, construction of words with "root" words, coupled with similar customs, appearance and a common passion for freedom.
The Basque language has too many similarities with the Ainu of Japan to be a coincidence as is the Pacific Island countries languages to ancient Greek.
All these may sound outrageous, but a comparison of dictionaries gives linguists material for further examination.
I tried to write an article about the above in a popular Greek newspaper and they dismissed it because I had no published references! I guess no one has thought of studying these similarities which are self-explanatory to me.
Recently, a Greek friend arrived in Canada to look for work. Wherever she applied she was encouraged to stress that she is "aboriginal" in which case she would have a better chance of getting the job being a minority person. Of course, she was astounded that she was taken for a Canadian aboriginal!!
- Badges
- Science topic
- Similar topics
- Data Mining
- Classification