Re: On Relating Languages

Skrivet gant Nicolas Walker:

>Yet more questions for the list (my third this week!), but on a different
>subject to both 'Antecedant Prepositions to Suffixes ???' and 'The Long
>Vowel Rule'. My questions today concern language families.
>
>I have three languages on the go, seperately concieved, yet structured
>(unintentionally) around similar 'design principles'. Upon realising that
>these languages were indeed related in some obscure ways, I thought
>perhaps I might be able to actually relate one to the other. I'm not big
>on 'con-worlding'(though I will conceed to have 'dabbled'), so I would
>prefer the  to be on a 'real' linguistic level. I naturally thought of
>language families.
>
>So,
>
>(1) In what ways may languages show relationship? I am aware of the main
>ones, but cannot find a comprehensive list or extended explanation. To
>cite only one of many examples, does the invariable nature of the
>adjective constitute grounds for a relationship? What about the
>substitution of the grapheme 'i' for [j]? What are the
>really 'interesting' ways a langauge can be related to another?
>
>
>
baically you have two solutions :
a) your languages are the descendant of the same, older, proto-language.
If you have allready designed a lexicon this might be not pratical,
since related languages have related vocabularies.
b) your languages are not genetically related but have lived next to
each other for a very long time. They have extensively borrowed from
each other and their strucres (at first very different) have converged.
You'll find may examples of this in Europe (for instance the post-posed
article in bulgarian, romanian nd crimean gothic) or the use of to have
+ past participle to express the perfect in German (germanic), Frenc
(Romance) and Breton (Celtic) or the use of an undefinite article in
those three languages and in Hungarian (Uralic).
The substitution of i for the sound [j] has no effect whatsoever on the
language itself. Some languages  have several spelling system and even
several writting systems (Romanian for instance) yet remain one.


>(2)The phonology of each language is different, although they all
>fairly 'normal' (I suppose that is to say Indo-European). The approximate
>real word equivalent off each sound system would be (1)German(ic) (2)
>Arabic (3)Gaelic. Therefore,
>(a)In what main ways do sound systems diverge, in particular those
>mentioned above - i.e. Gaelic, German, Arabic.
>
>
German and Gaelic are related (both indo-european). Arabic is very
different, with a whole class of consonnants you will never find in
Indo-european tongues.
In generall sound system diverge widely, rangng fom the minialistic
(Piraha with 10 phonemes) to the deliriously complex (some khoisa
languages with 90 consonnants - a lot of them being clicks - AND a tonal
system)

>(b)How might I show relationship between, for example, one language with 5
>vowels ([a],[e],[i],[o],[u]), another with only 3 ([a],[e],[u]),
>
easy : b merged [e] and [i] and [o] and [u]

> and a
>third with a long list of glides, diphthongs and 'soft' (as in Russian)
>prononunciations.
>
more complex but still doable, the ancestor had a simple vowel system
and over time its vowels were diphtonguized or transformed under the
influence of neighboring sounds. Not that Russian is not very complex,
far less any way than, say, English, French or Mandarin.

> I suppose what I am getting at is, at what point is a
>language UNRELATABLE to the next?
>
>
>
Nowhere provided you give a good explaination for your weird features.
Explaining how a language with clicks might b related to another which
has none might be difficult but since Zulu is obviously related to
Swahili it can be done.

>(3)What is the 'correct' academic fashion to explain and express
>relationship and langauge families. What are the accepted norms when it
>comes to comparative method, family trees, dialects, orthography etc.?
>
>
The main rule : there must be coherent rules explainig why a given sound
correspounds to a nother in a relate language. For instance : Latin [k]
becomes [s] in French when placed before [i] or [e] or all germanic
borrowing in french begginning by [w] see their initial [w] changed into [g]