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LANGUAGE AND CULTURE

LANGUAGE AND CULTURE. CULTURE : integrated human knowledge, belief and behaviour, which depends on the capacity of symbolic thought and social learning (pan-human or shared by different groups). LANGUAGE is a system of (verbal) signs embedded in social and cultural reality of language users.

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LANGUAGE AND CULTURE

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  1. LANGUAGE AND CULTURE

  2. CULTURE: integrated human knowledge, belief and behaviour, which depends on the capacity of symbolic thought and social learning (pan-human or shared by different groups). LANGUAGE is a system of (verbal) signs embedded in social and cultural reality of language users. The structures of language reflect (and shape?) COGNITIVE STRUCTURES. CULTURE MIND LANGUAGE

  3. LANGUAGE DIVERSITY 6.000-7.000 languages in the world Languages by the number of speakers: Mandarine Chines e 847,000.000 Hindi 366,000.000 English 341,000.000 Spanish 330.000,000 Bengali Arabic Portuguese Russian Japanese German …. 2000 languages – less than 1000 speakers

  4. Distribution/concentration of languages: English – official language in 52 countries 900 languages on Papua New Guinea (5-10 million people) high density also in Caucasus, (Native) California… ½ of languages no longer used by children 1/3 of languages less than 1000 speakers English: 615.000 non-technical words (over 2,000.000, if slang and techical words added) (imported from more than 240 languages) average use in daily speech 800-1000 words college graduates 10.000-20.000

  5. Where does all this diversity come from? Franz Boas (1858-1942), anthropologist “Since the total range of personal experience which language serves to express is infinitely varied, and its whole scope must be expressed by a limited number of phonetic groups, it is obvious that an extended classification of experience must underline all articulate speech.”

  6. Where does all this diversity come from? Different languages – different implicit classification of experience: Inuit: aput ‘snow on the ground’ qana ‘falling snow’ piqsirpoq ‘drifting snow’ qimuqsuq ‘snow drift’ Linguistic classifications reflect, not dictate thought.

  7. Edward Sapir (1884-1939), anthropologist-linguist formal completeness of each language as a symbolic system:

  8. “The outstanding fact about any language is its formal completeness [...] [W]e may say that a language is so constructed that no matter what any speaker of it may desire to communicate [...] the language is prepared to do his work.” “The Hopi language is capable of accounting for and describing correctly...all observable phenomena of the universe... Just as it is possible to have any number of geometries other than the Euclidean”. Linguistic classifications channel thought: “ Language is guide to social reality [...] Human beings do not live in the objective world alone [...] but are very much at the mercy of the particular language which has become the medium of expression for their society [...] No two languages are ever sufficiently similar to be considered as representing the same social reality...«

  9. Benjamin Lee Whorf (1897-1941) known for his descriptions of Nahuatl, Hopi, Mayan and other native American languages the need for calibration – objective non-linguistic evaluation (physical sciences?) “The very natural tendency to use terms derived from traditional grammar, like verb, noun, adjective, passive voice, in describing languages outside of Indo-European is fraught with grave possibilities of misunderstanding”

  10. “We cut nature up, organize it into concepts, and ascribe significances as we do, largely because we are parties to an agreement to organize it in this way – an agreement that holds throughout our speech community and is codified in the patterns of our language. The agreement is, of course, and implicit and unstated one, but its terms are absolutely obligatory…” Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis = the structure of a language affects the way in which its speakers conceptualize the World.

  11. Categorization of the World comparison of things (phenomena) that are not alike but similar in (at least) one important way conceptual metaphor source domain (more concrete > target domain (more abstract) metaphor mapping: = a systematic set of correspondences that exist between constituent elements of the source and the target domain […] To know a conceptual metaphor is to know the set of mappings that applies to a given source-target pairing. Time is a path. I fear the days ahead. Time is money. Don’t waste my time.

  12. Lakoff, George & Mark Johnson (1980) Metaphors We Live By. Chicago: University of Chicago Press How does one’s conceptualization (categorization) of the world become culture? (integrated human knowledge, belief and behaviour, which depends on the capacity of symbolic thought and social learning (pan-human or shared by different groups). memetic theory: culture and language united by memes: meme > Greek mīmēma‘something imitated’ Richard Dawkings, The Selfish Gene (1976) “Culture is an aggregate of many different meme sets or memeplexes shared by the majority of population. Language – created by memes and for memes is [also] the principal medium used for spreading memes.”

  13. Cultural schemas/frames • Did you hear that the guy who the police were looking for’s red Cortina got stolen? • Will they deny that a nun who your shopkeeper was chatting up’s large settee got replicated? • c) No head injury is too trivial to ignore.

  14. “Grammar is thick with cultural meaning. Encoded in the semantics of grammar we find cultural values and ideas, we find clues about the social structures.” N. J. Enfield: Ethnosyntax. Explorations in Grammar and Culture. OUP 2002

  15. LANGUAGE FAMILIES AND LANGUAGE TYPOLOGY

  16. EUROPE

  17. EUROPE Indo-European Uralic (Ugro-Finnic) Altaic Basque Semitic

  18. INDO-EUROPEAN LANGUAGES from the Indo-Eropean Parent language, spoken about 5000-3000 AD in south-eastern Russia patriarchal society > kinship terms, masculine pantheon social stratification: slave < ‘warrior’, ‘man’ wulf, birch, beech, bear cow, dog, plough, seed

  19. inflectional language(s) nouns: 3 numbers + collective (?) – drevje : drevesa 3 genders 8 or 9 cases: nominative, vocative, accusative, genitive, dative, ablative, locative, directive (?) instrumental verbs: tense/aspect: present, imperfect, aorist, perfect, pluperfect, future mood: indicative, imperative, subjunctive, optative voice: active, middle persons: 3

  20. Indo-Iranian languages: Indic: Vedic, Sanskrit, Hindi, Bengali, Urdu, Romany… chakra, ashram, guru, karma, caste Iranian:Avestan, Iranian, Pashto, Kurdic, Ossetic, Tadjik… Balkan (‘upper house’), Bagdad (‘given by God’), balcony, caravan, candy, dervish, mag(ic), paradise

  21. Armenian attested from 5th c. AD Bible translation by St Mesrob Grabar – classical Armenian Armenian Apostolic Church Christianity as national religion (301) language: strong Iranian influence, convergeance with Caucasic languages glottalized consonants (ejectives)

  22. Albanian descended from Illyrian? Thracian? Ptolomy (150 AD) – Illyrian tribe Albani Middle Ages – Arbër, Arbëresh 16th c. - Shqipëria ‘land of eagles’(?) shqip ‘understand each other’ Arnaut – Turkish name

  23. 1190 – independent state Gheg – since 16th c. (north) Tosk – official Albanian (south)

  24. Baltic languages: Latvian, Lithuanian, Old Prussian (extinct)

  25. Anyone wishing to hear how Indo-Europeans spoke should come and listen to a Lithuanian peasant. (Antoine Meillet) pitch accent, free accent two grammatical genders (masculine and feminine)

  26. Slavic (Slavonic) languages: Eastern branch: Russian, Ukranian, Belarusian Western branch: Polish, Czech, Slovakian, Sorbian Southern branch: Old Church Slavonic (extinct), Bulgarian, Macedonian, Serbian, Croatian, Slovenian

  27. GREEK LANGUAGE(S) Minoan civilization on Crete (settled 128.000 BC, signs of agriculture 5000 BC) named by Arthur Evans Linear A Minoan eruption (Thera, Santorinin) - 2nd millenium BC, tsunami

  28. Minoan eruption – Thera (Santorini) ashes, tsunami, deforestation Mycenaean conquest

  29. Mycenean Greek – Linear B Ancient Greek: Aeolic Ionic (Asia Minor, Attic) Doric Greek alphabet < Phoenician syllabary Katharevousa Hellenistic Koinē > modern Greek Demotic (official in Greece, Cyprus)

  30. CELTS AND CELTIC LANGUAGES core territory – 6th century BC maximal expansion by 275 BC

  31. CELTIC LANGUAGES • (insular Celtic) • Brythonic: • Welsh (Cymric) • Cornish • Breton • Gaelic: • Irish Gaelic • Scottish Gaelic • Manx

  32. Brehon Law – the early Celtic law women’s rights to property, the king’s position and duties, status grading of clerics, lay men and poets, payment for injury, sick maintenance….

  33. linguistic typology of Celtic languages: • V-S-O order • consonant mutation • vigesimal numeric system 20 as the base number: French (quatre-vingts) Resian dialect of Slovene (trikart dwesti nu deset) English (score)

  34. counting base: no base (Melanisia: thumb, wrist, elbow, shoulder…) quarternary: (Maori, Papua New Guinea, other Austronesian languages) quinary: sub-base of vigesimal systems octal: American languages vigesimal: Mayan, Nahualt, Celtic…. decimal, duodecimal…

  35. GERMANIC LANGUAGES (expansion of the territory from 750 BC and 200 A)

  36. Western:Northern: German Danish Yiddish Faroese Plattdeutsch (Low German) Islandic Swiss German (Alemannic) Norwegian (Nynorsk, Bokmal) Dutch Swedish Afrikaans Flemish Frisian English Scots Eastern: Gothic Vandalic ….

  37. GOTHS migration from the Baltic to the Black Sea Wulfila (4th c. AD) Crimean Gothic

  38. Ostrogothic and Visigothic attacks on the Roman Empire Visigoths – in Iberia (till 711) Ostrogoths – In Italy (493-553)

  39. Gothic art

  40. Noth Germanic languagaes: Old Norse > eastern (Swedish, Danish) western (Norwegian > Faroese, Icelandic) Dansk-Norsk, Riksmal, Bokmal Landnorsk, Nynorsk

  41. West Germanic languages Bavarian Alemanic High German High Franconian Frankish Low Franconian Dutch North Sea (Ingvaeonic) Frisian English Saxon (Low German, Plattdeutsch)

  42. ROMANCE LANGUGES

  43. Italic languages: first attested in 7th c. BC in old Italic script on the basis of Etruscan/Greek alphabet

  44. Oscan , Umbrian, Latin • Archaic Latin (7th-2nd c. BC): scattered inscriptions, Plautus, Terence, Cato the Elder… • Classical Latin (Golden and Silver Age): Cicero, Caesar, Horace, • Vergil, Ovid, Seneca… • Vulgar Latin (spoken Latin, from 3rd c.) > Romance languages: • Gallo-Romance languages: • French (attested since 9th c.): langue d’oïl, langue d’oc • Central French, Norman French (Anglo-Norman), Walloon • Occitan > Provençal • Corsican?

  45. Ibero-Romance languages: Spanish Castilian (standard Spanish), attested since 11th c. Catalan (official language in Andorra, co-official in Catalonia, Balearic Islands and Valencia, spoken also in Alghero on Sardinia) Portuguese Ladino (Judaeo-Spanish) Italian (since 10th c. – dialects of Tuscany) Sardinian? Rhaeto-Romance languages: Ladin Friulian Romansch Istriot? Romanian

  46. ETRUSCAN Tusci, Etrusci (Latin) Tyrrennioi (Greek) Rassena, Rasna (Etruscan) since 8th c. BC – 3rd c. BC

  47. BASQUE LANGUAGE – EUSKARA Basque country – Euskal Herria: Spanish-French border 700.000 speakers, most bilingual, the first printed book in 1545 Basque language unrelated to any other known language DNA shows close relations to other Europeans

  48. ergative-absolutive language complex agreement system: the auxiliary agrees with the subject, direct and indirect object very complex nominal paradigm, (9 cases, 2 numbers, postpositioned article)

  49. ergative-absolutive languages It rains PREDICATEverb He kicked the ball He sleeps He gave her a flower VALENCY - THE NUMBER OF ARGUMENTS/ACTANTS/COPMPLEMENTS CONTROLLED BY THE PREDICATE

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