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Concourse 2

Comparing languages: Stage 3, morphemes

compare

Another way of comparing language types is to classify them in terms of how they handle morphemes
For example, in some languages almost every word can be broken down into a number of discrete parts.  In English, for example, we can break down a word like uninteresting into 3 distinct elements:

  1. un-: a prefix denoting an opposite meaning (that's changing meaning)
  2. interest: the base verb form
  3. -ing: the suffix denoting a participle adjective (that's changing word class)

In the same way, a word such as bookkeeper also comes in three parts:

  1. book
  2. keep
  3. -er

The first two go together as a compound and the last is a derivational suffix denoting a person who does something.

The key point here is the word : morpheme ratio.  Some languages have a low ratio (with each word standing alone and indivisible) and some have a higher ratio (with words made up of a range of meaning- and form-changing morphemes).
More on that in a minute.

think In this exercise, we have a classification (the technical words on the left), an example of what's happening and finally a column for you to think about a definition of the technical term.  Look at the first two columns and think about what the definition might be before you click on the eye open to reveal some ideas.
At the end, there are two more familiar categories for you to identify.
TERM Example Definition
AGGLUTINATING OR AGGLUTINATIVE LANGUAGES
eye open
English can do this in words like policewoman.
German and Turkish do it far more.
In German, for example, the term Hauptbahnhofgastsätte is made up of main + line + yard + guest + place and means mainline station restaurant.
ISOLATING, ANALYTIC OR ROOT LANGUAGES
eye open
In these languages each word stands alone with no affixes of any kind.  In English, for example, He must go now, has four words and four morphemes.
Most Chinese languages are like this with no endings to show tense, person, number etc.
Languages in which word forms do not change, and in which grammatical functions are shown by word order and the use of function words.
(Chinese, Vietnamese, English, Scandinavian languages [not Finnish])
These languages have a low or very low word to morpheme ratio
POLYSYNTHETIC OR INCORPORATING LANGUAGES
eye open
English is not one of these languages.  However, Chukchi: (a Siberian language) is.  In Chuckchi, the word  Təmeyŋəlevtpəγtərkən can be broken down into: subject + great-head-hurt + present tense or I have a bad headache.
INFLECTING, SYNTHETIC OR FUSIONAL LANGUAGES
eye open
Latin, French, Italian and other Romance languages fall into this category and Germanic and Slavic languages also exhibit the features.
For example, nous avons voulu in French (we wanted) shows endings for number, person and tense.  The -ons morpheme denotes both first person and plural simultaneously.
The equivalent for I wanted is j'ai voulu.
In Latin, the word bonus (good) includes markers for masculine gender + subject (nominative) case + singular number, all in the -us ending.
Languages in which grammatical relationships are shown by changing the internal structure of the words, typically by the use of endings which may express several grammatical meanings at once.
(French, Spanish, Czech, German etc.)
These languages have a high word to morpheme ratio
STRESS-TIMED LANGUAGES
eye open
If we say a sentence such as He went to London, the time it takes to utter the word London and the time to utter the rest of the sentence are more or less the same.  This means that words like to are reduced to 't'.
Languages in which it takes varying lengths of time to utter the same numbers of syllables.
(English, Dutch, Scandinavian languages)
SYLLABLE-TIMED LANGUAGES
eye open
If you say I went to London in French, it is Je suis allé à Londres and in this, all the words carry more or less equal stress and take the same time to utter.
Languages in which all syllables take approximately the same amount of time to utter.
(Greek, Italian, French)

We should recognise two important facts about the last two rows:

  1. This is not an either-or, on-off categorisation.  Languages exist on a cline from heavily stress timed to heavily syllable timed and most fall between the extremes so at best we should describe languages in terms of tendencies.
  2. There are other forms of timing (Mora, for example) which are not mentioned here.

explain

Some explanation

When there are two or three terms to describe a language type, the first one given is the most common.

There is cline from one end (highly inflected or synthetic languages) to the other end (completely isolating languages) with most falling somewhere in between as English does.  For more, see the guide to morphology (new tab).  The cline looks like this:
diagram

These are tendencies in languages, not absolute types.  English, for example, can show some agglutinating tendencies (e.g., bookkeeper) when words are simply added together, but also shows isolating tendencies by having few inflexions (e.g., I must go home).  It can also, however, use inflexions (such as the -s on the third person present simple verbs, the -s to show plurals or the -ed to show past tense) but it doesn't do this with anything like the enthusiasm of highly inflected languages such as French.

Before you go any further, try a test on the categories above to see if you have remembered them.
Use the Back button to return.


so what

So what?

You may well ask.
Adults in particular will tend to assume that a language they are learning will resemble one(s) they already speak so will actively look for similarities to help them.  Thus, speakers of inflecting languages will have few problems remembering to add -ed for a past tense but those from isolating language backgrounds (such as Thai or the Chinese languages) may well have problems simply because they don't necessarily see the need for such things.  Who is likely to have less or more difficulty with a word like unselfconsciousness?

The more different certain areas are, the more our learners need exposure to forms.

This CAN influence the ways in which we run our teaching:

Another way of looking at language differences

think write Look at this wheel.  English is at the centre and radiating lines show how much difference there is between English and, in this example, Russian (denoted by the R).
Can you put the other languages on the lines?  If you want to do this on paper, right click and save the image then print it out.

By the way, Spelling here refers to how closely the rules (doubling letters etc.) resemble those in English and 'Orthography' refers to the use of the alphabet, accents, special characters and so on.

task
(After Crystal, 1987, The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Language, p371)

Done?  OK.  Click here to go to the final Stage 4.

Index Stage 1 Stage 2 Stage 3 Stage 4 The lesson