The Morphological Classification of Languages

Date: 2015-10-07; view: 506.

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There were several attempts to classify languages starting with the beginning of the 19^th century.

The German scientist Friedrich Schlegel considered that there was a sharp dividing-line between flexional and non-flexional languages.

His brother August Schlegel divided languages into three groups: languages without and grammatical structure (relations are expressed only by word-order), languages which use affixes and languages with inflexions.

Wilhelm von Humboldt tried to discover the general laws of linguistic development. He followed the classification put forward by A. Schlegel, making it more exact. The first group of languages he termed ‘isolating', the second, having morphemes without much coalescence, ‘agglutinative' and the third group – ‘flexional'. He also introduced the fourth group of languages – incorporating or polysynthetic. He treated these groups as various stages of a single linguistic development.

August Schleicher founded a naturalistic theory of language and accepted the three-fold classification. His scheme of classification runs as follows:

Class 1 – isolating or root languages:

(a) R (=root) – Chinese

(b) R+r (=root+auxiliary word) – Burmese

Class 2 – agglutinative languages:

Synthetic type:

(a) Rs (=root+suffix) – Turkish and Finnish)

(b) I (=root +infix)

(c) pR (=prefix+root) – the Bantu languages

Analytic type:

(d) Rs (or pR) +r – Tibetan

Class 3 – flexional languages:

Synthetic type:

(a) ^ (pure inner flexion) – Semitic languages

(b) pR ⁺(R¹s) – (inner and outer flexion) – Indo-European languages

Analytic type:

(c) pR (R¹¹s)+r – Romance languages, English

Schleicher's theory manifests itself in two periods of linguistic development, a prehistoric period of progress, evolution or construction with the richness and fullness of forms, and a historic period of decay or destruction.

Edward Sapir's classification of languages was based on:

· on the expression of relations within the sentences and on the presence or absence of derivation: concrete radical, derived, concrete rational and pure relational languages;

· ‘technique' by which secondary elements are attached: isolating, agglutinative, fusional, symbolic;

· synthesis: analytic, synthetic, polysynthetic.

In Russian linguistics F.F. Fortunatov's classification can be singled out. It is based on the form and structure of the word. F.F. Fortunatov distinguishes 5 classes or types:

· flexional languages, in which the form of words is built with affixes and ablaut (inner flexion);

· flexional-agglutinative languages, which combine the characteristics of flexional and agglutinative languages;

· agglutinative languages, where affixes with one particular meaning are stuck on to an unchangeable root;

· isolating languages, characterized by the absence of conjugation and any word-form;

· polysynthetic languages, where words are coalesced into a word-sentence.