Brainscape's Knowledge GenomeTM


Top Flashcards (Certified)
All Flashcards

Linguistics 112 > Chapter 6 - World Languages and Language Families > Flashcards

Chapter 6 - World Languages and Language Families Flashcards

(58 cards)

Start Studying
1
Q

Sanskrit

A
  • Discovered by Sir William Jones in 1789

- Gave insight to the relationship between languages

How well did you know this?
1
Not at all
2
3
4
5
Perfectly
2
Q

Proto-Indo-European (PIE)

A
  • Related Sanskrit and other Indian languages to European languages
  • Reconstructed language
  • Hypothesized language family
How well did you know this?
1
Not at all
2
3
4
5
Perfectly
3
Q

Name the major Proto-Indo European branches.

A
  • Albanian
  • Armenian
  • Baltic
  • Celtic
  • Germanic
  • Greek
  • Indo-Iranian
  • Italic
  • Slavic
How well did you know this?
1
Not at all
2
3
4
5
Perfectly
4
Q

Describe the Albanian branch

A
  • Includes Albanian, Gheg

- Spoken in Albania and Serbia

How well did you know this?
1
Not at all
2
3
4
5
Perfectly
5
Q

Describe the Armenian branch

A
  • Included Armenian

- Spoken in Armenia

How well did you know this?
1
Not at all
2
3
4
5
Perfectly
6
Q

Describe the Baltic branch

A
  • Includes Latvian, Lithuanian

- Spoken in Latvia and Lithuania

How well did you know this?
1
Not at all
2
3
4
5
Perfectly
7
Q

Describe the Celtic branch

A

Continental branch (Extinct)

Insular branch
{Brythonic / P-Celtic}
-Welsh, Breton, Cornish (Ex)

{Goildelic / Q-Celtic}
-Welsh, Manx (Ex)

-Spoken in the UK and Ireland

How well did you know this?
1
Not at all
2
3
4
5
Perfectly
8
Q

Describe the Germanic branch

A

West Germanic:
-Includes Yiddish, English, Frisian, Dutch

North Germanic:
{West Scandinavian}
-Includes Faroese, Icelandic

{East Scandinavian}
-Includes Danish, Swedish

East Germanic:

  • Includes Gothic, Bargundian, Vanadian
  • All East Germanic Languages are extinct

-Spoken in Germany, Scandinavia, North America etc.

How well did you know this?
1
Not at all
2
3
4
5
Perfectly
9
Q

Describe the Greek branch

A
  • Includes Greek, Pontic

- Spoken in Greece

How well did you know this?
1
Not at all
2
3
4
5
Perfectly
10
Q

Describe the Indo-Iranian branch

A
  • Includes Sanskrit, Hindi

- Spoken in India, Pakistan etc.

How well did you know this?
1
Not at all
2
3
4
5
Perfectly
11
Q

Describe the Italic Branch

A

Western Romance
{Ibero-Romance}
-Includes Spanish, Portuguese, Catalan, Castilian, Austrian

{Gallo Romance}
-Includes Lombard, Venetian, French, Walloon

Italian / Cillian
-Includes Italian

-Spoken in Italy, France, Spain, Portugal etc.

How well did you know this?
1
Not at all
2
3
4
5
Perfectly
12
Q

Describe the Slavic branch

A

West Slavic
-Includes Czech, Slovak, Polish

East Slavic
-Includes Russian, Ukrainian, Belarusian

South Slavic
-Includes Bulgarian, Macedonian, Serbo-Croatian, Slovene

How well did you know this?
1
Not at all
2
3
4
5
Perfectly
13
Q

Latin

A
  • Hard to classify as it is has no native speakers, but the Vatican state and Catholic church use it
  • Oldest Italic language
How well did you know this?
1
Not at all
2
3
4
5
Perfectly
14
Q

Pidgin

A

Two languages meet and attempt to communicate

How well did you know this?
1
Not at all
2
3
4
5
Perfectly
15
Q

Creole

A
  • A creole is formed when a Pidgin language evolves far enough to start having native speakers
  • A mash up of two different languages that has native speakers
How well did you know this?
1
Not at all
2
3
4
5
Perfectly
16
Q

What are the two unique Germanic languages in Canada?

A

Hutterisch and Plautdietsch

How well did you know this?
1
Not at all
2
3
4
5
Perfectly
17
Q

Differences between Walloon and French

A
  • Walloon has no gender marking
  • Walloon has nasal vowels and distinct vowel length
  • Walloon’s adjectives precede their nouns
How well did you know this?
1
Not at all
2
3
4
5
Perfectly
18
Q

What are some typological features of the Slavic branch?

A
  • Palatal consonants [tS] / [d3]

- Fusional Morphology

How well did you know this?
1
Not at all
2
3
4
5
Perfectly
19
Q

Describe the Uralic family

A

Finno-Urgic
{Urgic}
-Includes Hungarian, Khanty, Mansi

{Finnic}
-Includes Finnish, Estonian

Typology: agglutinating, vowel harmony, no gender morphology (not even pronouns)

-Indo-European Family

How well did you know this?
1
Not at all
2
3
4
5
Perfectly
20
Q

Describe the Altaic language family

A

Turkic
-Includes Turkishir, Turkmen, Uzbek, Kazakh etc.

Mongolic
-Includes Mongolian, Buryat

Tungusic
-Includes Evenki, Nani, Manch

Japonic
-Includes Japanese, Ryukyuan

Korean
-Includes Korean

Typology: Agglutinating, vowel harmony

How well did you know this?
1
Not at all
2
3
4
5
Perfectly
21
Q

Describe the Afro-Asiatic Branch

A

Berber
-Spoken in Libya, Algeria, Morocco, Mauritania

Chadic
-Spoken in Nigeria, Cameroon, Chad

Cushititc
-Spoken in Ethiopia, Somalia, Eritrea

Semetic
-Spoken in Israel (Hebrew), Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Syria, Iraq (Arabic), Ethiopia (Amharic)

Omotic

Egyptian (Extinct)
-Includes Coptic and Ancient Egyptian

Typology: Templatic morphology, VSO word order, Glottalization, Pharyngealization

How well did you know this?
1
Not at all
2
3
4
5
Perfectly
22
Q

Describe the Sino-Tibetan branch

A

Chinese

  • Largest branch in terms of number of speakers
  • Includes Mandarin, Cantonese etc.

Tibeto-Burman
-Spoken in Tibet and Burma

Typology: Isolating morphology, tonal

How well did you know this?
1
Not at all
2
3
4
5
Perfectly
23
Q

Isolating Morphology

A

One morpheme conveys the meaning of a word

Eg. Chinese is very isolating, as each character (morpheme) represents one word

How well did you know this?
1
Not at all
2
3
4
5
Perfectly
24
Q

Agglutinating Morphology

Study These Flashcards
A
  • Multiple suffixes added to word roots
  • Each suffix conveys some type of meaning
  • Lots of noun cases
25
Phoneme
Distinct speech sounds
26
Morpheme
Smallest units of language that convey meaning
27
Affix
Morphemes that attach before (prefix) or after (suffix) the root
28
Analytic Languages
- Isolating languages - No affixes - 1 word = 1 root morpheme
29
Synthetic Language
- Fusional / Agglutinating languages | - Contain cases and holes
30
Fusional Language
- 1 word = 1 root + inflectional morphemes - Inflectional Morpheme: encodes several meanings Eg. Russian, French
31
Polysynthetic Language
1 word = 1 sentence -Contains root word (verb/noun), the rest of the meaning is conveyed in affixes Eg. Cree, Inuit and many other North American Indigenous languages
32
Mixed Type Language
Languages with elements from two or more morphological categories Eg. English = fusional + isolating
33
Diachronic
Historically isolating language
34
Templatic Morphology
- Seen in Semitic languages | - Consonantal roots with added vowels to convey meaning
35
Preposition
Words that come before the noun
36
Postposition
Words that come after the noun
37
Syntactic Typology
- Word order - Scrambling languages can move their words around - Unmarked word order is the basic, most common word order found in any particular language
38
Comparitve Method
-Comparing phonemes in corresponding words in various languages Two major rules: ``` -Sound change plausibility =Sounds are more likely to... = be deleted rather than inserted =be palatalized before front vowels =be voiced between vowels be devoiced word finally ``` -Majority rule =If there is one exception, it will be ignored Eg. If all words in a cognate begin with s except for one., reconstruction will include a s at the beginning
39
Segmental Sound Change
Simplification of sounds Eg. Deaffrication
40
Sequential Sound Change
- Change in sound sequence - Most common Eg. Assimilation
41
Auditory Based Sound Change
Based on auditory similarites
42
Assimilation
- Sequential sound change - Two sound segments become more similar - Assimilation of place, manner, voicing or palatalization
43
Dissimilation
- Sequential sound change - Two sound segments become less similar - Can occur at a distance - Dissimilation of place, manner, voicing or palatalization
44
Epenthesis
- Sequential sound change - Addition of a sound segment into a word - Caused by anticipation of upcoming sounds - Can aid in pronunciation
45
Metathesis
- Sequential sound change - Sound segments get shifted around - Spoonerisms
46
Vowel Reduction / Weakening
Weakening of a vowel to a schwa
47
Vowel Deletion
Apocope: word final vowel deletion Syncope: word internal vowel deletion
48
Consonant Deletion
- Loss of consonant in any position - Lost consonant still reflected in spelling Eg. Knight, knife etc.
49
Consonant Weakening
Scale of consonantal strength: (strongest to weakest) Voiceless Stops Voiceless Fricatives / Voiced Stops Voiced Fricatives Nasals Liquids Glides -Consonant strengthening occurs in the opposite direction
50
Degemination
-Geminate consonants are stronger than degeminate consonants Eg. tt - geminate
51
Intervocalic / Intersonorant Voicing
- Assimilation | - Voiceless stops become voiced
52
Spirantization / Frication
Fricatives occur between two vowels intervocalically
53
Sonority Scale
From most to least sonorous: Vowels Approximants Nasals Fricatives Affricates Stops
54
Split
Same phoneme splits into separate phonemes in different dialects of the same language
55
Merge
Two distinct phonemes become one phoneme in a language
56
Shift
Systematic rearrangement of phonemes in a sound system
57
Grimm's Law
- Rasmus Rask and Jakob Grimm | - Explains the differences in sounds between Germanic languages and other Indo-European languages
58
Great Vowel Shift
- Otto Jespersen - Officially began 15th century, officially ended 18th century - Major series of changes affecting how vowels in English are pronounced - Affected every dialect

Linguistics 112 (6 decks)

Brainscape helps you reach your goals faster, through stronger study habits.
© 2025 Bold Learning Solutions. Terms and Conditions