INDO-EUROPEAN LANGUAGES

1. Ways of Classifying Languages (Study Tip)
1. Typological Classifications: group languages according to similar grammatical systems
1. isolating
1. each idea expressed in a separate word or morpheme; words tend to be monosyllabic
2. e.g., Chinese; most people share only four surnames; govt. has asked population to be more creative in naming children, and one suggestion is to consider two-character names
2. agglutinative
1. words made of multiple syllables; each syllable has meaning
2. e.g., Turkish. For example, ev (house), evler (houses), evlerde (in the houses), evlerden (from the houses)
3. incorporative
1. major sentence elements incorporated into single word
2. e.g., Inuktitut (Eskimo): Qasuiirsarvigssarsingitluinarnarpuq means "Someone did not find a completely suitable resting place"
4. inflective
1. an alteration in or addition to a form of a word to indicate such things as case, gender, number, mood, and tense; one fusional affix may mark several grammatical categories at the same time
2. e.g., Latin & Old English



2. Genetic Classification: group languages according to their common sources
   1. Semitic
   1. eastern: Assyrian
   2. western: Hebrew (Old Testament), Aramaic (language of Jesus; also large portions of Ezra and Daniel), Phoenician, Moabitic
   3. southern: Arabic (Koran) and Ethiopic
   2. Hamitic
   1. Coptic (Egyptian; liturgy of Coptic church)
   2. Berber dialects of North Africa
   3. Cushitic dialects of the upper Nile (named for Cush, a son of Ham)
   4. Chadic (Chad & Nigeria)
   3. Japhetic (Indo-European)
   1. 140 of about 5000 known languages are I-E
   2. Although less than 3% of languages, spoken by nearly half the world's population
   4. Some Major Non-I-E Families

Nilo-Saharan (from North Africa to equator)

Niger-Kordofanian (equator to the south)

Khoisan (extreme SW Africa --e.g., Angola, Hotentot tribes)

Dravidian (mostly aboriginal languages of India)

Sino-Tibetan (Mandarin, Cantonese, Tibetan, Burmese, etc.)

Malayo-Polynesian

Uto-Aztecan

Kechumaran (Incas)

Altaic (Turkish, Mongolian, Manchu, Japanese & Korean)

Ural-Altaic (Finnish, Estonian, Lappish, and Hungarian)

1. The Indo-European Family
1. Sir William Jones & the Importance of Sanskrit
1. Scholars had speculated in general ways about a proto-language that connected most European languages
2. In 1786, Sir William Jones, a supreme court judge in India, proposed that Sanskrit, the language of ancient India, was similar to Greek and Latin, so they must have a common source. Jones is said to know 28 languages; he opposed slavery and the British war against the American colonies, so he was posted to a judgeship in Calcutta, perhaps as a punishment
3. Not only did Sanskrit have cognates with European languages, it had a similar inflectional system, suggesting that the inflectional systems also shared a common source.
2. Significant Features
3. Further divisions



2. Who were the Indo-Europeans?
1. What can we learn from their language?
1. common words for snow, winter, spring; for dog, horse, cow, sheep bear but not camel, lion, elephant, or tiger; for beech, oak, pine, willow, but not palm or banyan
2. I-E Cultural: complex sense of family relationship and organization; used gold and silver but not copper and iron; words for "wheel," "axle," and "yoke" show they used animals to pull wheeled vehicles; they farmed (not nomadic) with plows and kept domestic animals; they believed in multiple gods.
2. The bee problem
1. Many I-E languages have cognates for the honey bee and for a fermented honey drink (e.g. Greek "méli" (honey) and "mélissa (bee); Latin mel (honey); Old English milisc (honey sweet), medu (mead) and mildeaw (honey dew); Sanskrit madhu (honey); Dutch mede)
2. Bees are not found in any of the Asiatic sites proposed as the IE homeland.
3. A guess at the I-E homeland

• Lithuania