LING 1F94 Lecture Notes - Lecture 18: Polysynthetic Language, Mutual Intelligibility, Language Death
1 Apr 2017
School
Department
Course
Professor
Document Summary
All languages are a dialect of something (english spoken in canada, english spoken in. Dialect lacks institutional support from government to turn it into a language. Criteria in deciding what is a language: size, prestige, mutual intelligibility. 70% of world"s population speaks about 11 languages. When children stop learning a language, language death occurs. Window to the human mind is lost. All human language function is a function of the brain, not something you look up in a book. First person- speaker, second person- addressee, third person- other party. Languages are genetically related if developed historically from the same ancestor language. Ex: greek and english are related, basque and french are not related: linguistic typology. Classifies languages only according to their structural characteristics without regard for genetic relationships. Ex: retroflex stops: dravidian and warlpiri: areal classification. Identifies characteristics shared by languages that are in geographical contact.
