1 / 33

Language Geography

Language Geography. Culture – The sum total of the knowledge, attitudes, and habitual behavior patterns shared and transmitted by the members of a society Language – a systematic way of communicating ideas & feelings with the use of conventional signs and gestures, especially voice

lankston-joey
Télécharger la présentation

Language Geography

An Image/Link below is provided (as is) to download presentation Download Policy: Content on the Website is provided to you AS IS for your information and personal use and may not be sold / licensed / shared on other websites without getting consent from its author. Content is provided to you AS IS for your information and personal use only. Download presentation by click this link. While downloading, if for some reason you are not able to download a presentation, the publisher may have deleted the file from their server. During download, if you can't get a presentation, the file might be deleted by the publisher.

E N D

Presentation Transcript

  1. Language Geography

  2. Culture – The sum total of the knowledge, attitudes, and habitual behavior patterns shared and transmitted by the members of a society • Language – a systematic way of communicating ideas & feelings with the use of conventional signs and gestures, especially voice • The essence of culture • Preliterate societies – no written language; no foundation for cultural preservation • Before writing there were 5,000-6,000 languages (some became written, many are extinct)

  3. Only humans have developed complex vocal communication systems that change over time and space. • Standard language – the variant of a language that a country’s political & intellectual elite seek to promote as the norm (e.g. King’s English) • Dialect – local or regional characteristics of a language. (More than an accent (pronunciation variation) – distinctive syntax, grammar, vocabulary, and cadence • Animals communicate w/ gestures and vocalization – is it language? NO!

  4. Isogloss – a geographic boundary within which a particular linguistic feature occurs • e.g. “Pop” vs. “Soda” • Isoglosses tend to move over time Pop? Soda? Coke? You vs. y’all

  5. Language vs. Dialect • Chinese – viewed as one language (Chinese have maintained a state of several Sino-Tibetan tongues), divided by dialects that are mutually unintelligible • Norwegian, Danish, and Swedish – different (disintegration of empires); perhaps no more similar than Mandarin (874), Wu (75) and Yue (Cantonese – 71)

  6. World Languages: Æ Å Ñ Ä Ê Ó õ ã è ç ÿ ü å ΏЖώץשאتخصيكﷲﻉﻻﻈэפ • Language families – have a shared, but fairly distant origin (e.g. Indo-European); Subfamilies – commonality is more definite; Groups – sets of individual languages • Europe – dominated by Indo-European • Germanic: English, German, Swedish, … • Romance: French, Spanish, Italian, … • Slavic: Russian, Polish, Czech,…

  7. Major Indo-European Branches Germanic Romance Slavic Other Indo-European Branches Celtic Baltic Hellenic Thracian/Ilyrian Other Families Finno-Ugric Samoyedic Altaic Other - Basque

  8. Major World Languages English Indo-European Spanish Chinese Sino-Tibetan Japanese Japanese-Korean Afro-Asiatic Arabic Malay-Polynesian Indonesian Dravidian (India) Telugu Altaic Turkish Niger-Congo Bantu (group)

  9. Indo-European Languages

  10. Non-Indo-European Languages

  11. India • 4 language families – only Indo-European & Dravidian have significant numbers • Close relationship b/w regional languages and political divisions

  12. Africa • N. Afr. – mostly Afro-Asiatic • Sub-Saharan - largest familyis Niger-Congo • Language mosaic is intensely fragmented • More than 1,000 languages, most are unwritten

  13. Diffusion of Languages

  14. Diffusion • Sound Shifts – charting of the diversification of languages over time; e.g. octo (Latin), otto (Ita), ocho (Spa), … • Deep Reconstruction – find vocabulary of an extinct language and go backward; Proto-Indo European • William Jones (>200 yrs. ago) – Sanskrit similar to Greek and Latin • Jacob Grimm – related languages have similar, but not identical consonants; e.g. vater (Ger) … vader (Dut), father (Eng) – softening over time • 4 Tasks: Reconstruct the ancient language, find the hearth, routes of diffusion, and peoples’ ways of life

  15. The Language Tree – “Mother Tongue” (Indo-European branch is highlighted)

  16. Divergence – differentiation over time and space; languages branch into dialects, become isolated, then new languages • Convergence – linked to human mobility (relocation diffusion); complicates rules of reconstruction • Replacement – modification of a language by stronger cultures (acculturation); e.g. Hungarian surrounded by Ind-Eur, Basque? • Clues: Linguists look for environmental vocabulary (landforms, vegetation,…)

  17. Conquest Theory: Hearth is Ukraine (>5,000 yrs. ago); people used horses, wheel, and trade, spread language westward • Agriculture Theory: Hearth is Anatolia (Turkey - >10,000 yrs. ago); Ukraine relied on pastoralism, not farming • Farming people of Anatolia moved N & W • Distance decay from source area; some non-farming people held out (Basque in Spain) • Drawbacks: Anatolia not ideal for farming, some evidence states Proto-Indo-European language spread eastward first • Renfrew Model – 3 hearths: Anatolia - Eur, Fertile Crescent (West) – N. Afr. & Arabia, Fert. Cres. (East) – Iran through India

  18. 3 Maps Illustrating Possible Routes of Language Diffusion as Stated by the Agriculture Theory

  19. Nostratic – Pre-Proto-Indo-European, speakers were hunters-gatherers, source of many other language families

  20. Pacific Diffusion – Austronesian starts in China to Taiwan (>6,000 yrs. ago) then SE to New Zealand as people moved from island to island

  21. American Diffusion – Joseph Greenberg’s Hypothesis: • Amerind – oldest, largest • Na-Dene • Eskimo-Aleut

  22. Modern Language Mosaics – influenced by: • literacy, • technology (printing press - Gutenberg), • political organization (rise of nation-states)

  23. Modern Language Mosaics

  24. Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch – “longest place name in the world”

  25. US is changing – Hispanics are now the largest minority (“Hispanicization”) • > ½ are functionally illiterate in English (many early US immigrants were as well)

  26. One Global Language? • Esperanto Experiment • occurred in early 1900s • based on Latin & other Indo-Eur. languages • failed – not a global tongue; lacked practical utility • English – becoming a lingua franca of the world (commerce, science & technology)

  27. Lingua Franca • Ancient Mediterranean - “Frankish language” • Today - “common language”; second language • Pidgin – a language that has been simplified and modified through contact w/ other languages • Creole • Caribbean – mixing during slavery & colonizing • Today – pidgin later adopted as mother tongue • Creolization – a language gets mixed and simplified – becomes a pidgin – then becomes a creole language (when adopted as a mother tongue)

  28. Three African Lingua Francae

  29. Language & Culture • Monolingual states – Japan, Venezuela, Iceland, Portugal, Poland,… • Multilingual states – all others • Canada – Quebec (French by law), English everywhere else • Belgium – Dutch vs. French (Brussels officially bilingual) • Nigeria – over 230 local tongues; adopted English (colony)

  30. Quebec vs. Canada

  31. Official Language – often selected by the educated and politically elite to promote national cohesion; commonly language of colonial power • Angola – Portuguese; Nigeria – English; Côte d’Ivoire - French • **Allows people w/ different languages to communicate & keep their own language • Toponymy – systematic study of place-names (can elicit strong passions) • Leningrad – St. Petersburg; Bombay – Mumbai; Zaire – Dem. Rep. of the Congo

More Related