Introducing Linguistics Theoretical and Applied Approaches

Chapter 7 first considers some general issues regarding the classification of languages, such as the contrast between language and dialect. The chapter then explores how languages can be grouped into families based on their historical relationships and what types of evidence are needed to prove such family relationships among languages. It looks at how ancestral languages such as Proto-Indo-European can be reconstructed on the basis of their present-day descendants. In subsequent sections, typological classifications are discussed. Since languages vary in many different ways on several levels—by the sounds they employ, word-structure patterns, word orders, and the ways certain meanings are expressed—numerous typological classifications can be devised. Throughout the chapter, three such classifications are examined, one based on morphological structures, another based on the syntactic factors such as word order, and one based on semantic properties of the languages being classified. Readers will explore how language classifications can change over time and how the two types of classifications—familial and typological—correspond.