How languages are classified by origin. Language families and language groups of languages. I. Indo-European languages

15. Genealogical classification of languages

Modern linguistics is engaged not only in the study and description of the languages of the world, but also in their classification, determining the place of each language among the languages of the world. The classification of languages is the distribution of the languages of the world into groups based on certain characteristics, in accordance with the principles underlying the study. There are various classifications of languages, among which the main ones are genealogical (or genetic), typological (originally known as morphological) and geographical (or areal). The principles of classification of the languages of the world are different for them.

Genealogical classification is based on the concept of linguistic affinity. Its purpose is to determine the place of a particular language in the circle of related languages, to establish its genetic links. The main research method is a comparative historical one, the main classification category is a family, a branch, a group of languages (Russian, for example, according to this classification is included in the family Slavic languages allocated on the basis of their common source - the Proto-Slavic language; French is in the family of Romance languages, dating back to a common source - folk Latin).

Morphological classification is based on the concept of similarity (formal and / or semantic) and, accordingly, the difference of languages. It is based primarily on the features of the structure of languages, in particular, on the signs of the morphological structure of the word, the ways of connecting morphemes, the role of inflections and affixes in the formation of grammatical forms of the word and in the transfer of the grammatical meaning of the word. Its purpose is to group languages into large classes based on the similarity of their grammatical structure, or rather the principles of its organization, to determine the place of a particular language, taking into account the formal organization of its linguistic structure. The main research method is comparative, the main classification category is the type, class of languages (Russian, for example, just like other Indo-European languages, belongs to the languages of the inflectional type, since inflection, closely related to the stem of the word, is a stable and essential feature of the morphological structure of the word).

Geographic classification associated with the place of distribution (original or later) of a particular language (or dialect). Its purpose is to determine the area of the language (or dialect), taking into account the boundaries of its linguistic features. The main research method is linguo-geographical, the main classification category is an area or zone (cf. the areas of interaction of dialects or languages within the framework of a linguistic union). An areal classification is also possible within one language in relation to its dialects (cf. the areal classification of Russian dialects, according to which North Russian and South Russian dialects are distinguished, as well as transitional Central Russian dialects).

These classifications differ not only in their goals, but also in the degree of their stability: a genealogical classification is absolutely stable (since each language originally belongs to a particular family, group of languages and cannot change the nature of this affiliation); morphological classification is always relative and historically changeable (since each language is constantly evolving, its structure and the very theoretical understanding of this structure are changing); an areal classification is more or less stable, depending on the features underlying it.

In addition to these three main types of classifications, sometimes there are functional (or social) , as well as cultural- historical classification . Functional classification comes from the scope of the functioning of the language. It is based on the study of acts of speech and types of linguistic communication. In accordance with this classification, languages are divided into natural, which are a means of communication (oral and written languages) and artificial, i.e. graphic languages that do not reproduce the forms of natural languages and are used in the field of science and technology (cf., for example, programming languages, information languages, logical languages, etc.). The cultural-historical classification examines languages from the point of view of their relationship to the history of culture. In accordance with this classification, taking into account the historical sequence of the development of culture, unwritten, written languages are distinguished, literary languages nationalities and nations, languages of interethnic communication.

Exam: Theory of language

There are 2500-3000 languages on Earth. These languages differ both in their prevalence and social functions, as well as in the peculiarities of the phonetic structure and vocabulary, morphological and syntactic characteristics. In linguistics, there are a number of classifications of languages. The main ones are four: areal (geographic), genealogical, typological and functional.

Genealogical The classification is based on the definition of family relationships between languages. At the same time, the common origin of related languages is proved and their development from a single, often reconstructed in special ways, language, which is called the parent language, is demonstrated. In the genealogical classification of languages, first of all, the degree of their kinship and ties is ascertained.

Typological (morphological), Operates with classes of languages that are combined according to those features that are selected as reflecting the most significant features of the linguistic structure (for example, the way morphemes are combined). The best known is the morphological classification of languages, according to which languages are distributed through the abstract concept of type into the following four classes: 1) isolating, or amorphous, such as Chinese. 2) agglutinative, or agglutinating, for example, Turkic and Bantu languages. 3) incorporating, or polysynthetic, for example, Chukchi-Kamchatka. 4) inflectional languages, such as Slavic, Baltic.

Areal (geographic), An areal classification of languages is also possible for idioms within the genealogical classification of languages (for example, the Polesian area, covering Belarusian-Ukrainian dialects), and for languages of different genetic affiliation (for example, the Carpathian area of Hungarian-Slavic dialects). In areal classification important role play signs associated with contact phenomena. Areal classification is also possible within one language in relation to its dialects; it underlies linguistic geography. Geographic classification is associated with the place of distribution (original or late) of a particular language (or dialect). Its purpose is to determine the area of the language (or dialect), taking into account the boundaries of its linguistic features. The main research method is linguogeographical. A special category of areal classification of languages is formed by language unions, which are formed as a result of speech interaction in the sphere of household communication. within the framework of a linguistic union, there is a convergence of related and unrelated languages and dialects included in it, united by a certain commonality of household vocabulary, syntactic constructions, characteristic features morphology and phonetics. Thus, the areal classification consists in studying the language map of the world, linguistic characteristics different countries, as well as the distribution of individual languages or groups of languages.

Functional classification Languages is multidimensional. It takes into account three main divisions:

1) the connection of a language with the people to which it belongs,

2) the functions that the language performs in society,

3) the prevalence of the language outside the main ethnic area. According to the connection of the language with the people, three main social types of language are distinguished - the tribal language, the language of the people, and the national language. social type language is determined by the social community of people. According to the coverage of people, languages are divided into languages of narrow and wide use. Narrow USE languages ARE tribal and minority languages. National LANGUAGES are used not only as languages of interethnic, but also INTERNATIONAL communication. In this case, the use of language goes beyond the LIMITS of its ethnic area, and it becomes not only a means of communication, but also a means of fixing the data of science and art.

Cultural and historical The classification deals almost exclusively with literary and written languages, with written variants of languages that serve ethnic groups of peoples or nations. "

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18 . Principles of classification of languages of the world. Genealogical, typological and cultural-historical classification of languages.

There are 2500-3000 languages on Earth. These languages differ both in their prevalence and social functions, as well as in the peculiarities of the phonetic structure and vocabulary, morphological and syntactic characteristics. In linguistics, there are a number of classifications of languages. The main ones are: genealogical (or genetic), typological (or morphological), functional, areal (geographic) and cultural and historical.

Genealogical classification

Genealogical classification of languages, a classification based on the genetic principle, i.e., grouping languages related by origin into language families. At the same time, the common origin of related languages is proved and their development from a single, often reconstructed in special ways, language, which is called the parent language, is demonstrated. In the genealogical classification of languages, first of all, the degree of their kinship and ties is ascertained.

The genealogical classification of languages became possible only after the emergence of the concept of linguistic kinship and approval in linguistic research the principle of historicism (XIX century). It develops as a result of studying languages with the help of a comparative-historical method. Language families usually break down into smaller groups that combine languages that are genetically more closely related to each other; many of them are of very late date.

Most of the world's languages are combined into families, some languages are considered isolated (that is, they are monolingual families) or remain unclassified. A family of languages is considered to be a genetic linguistic association of approximately the same level of depth as the Indo-European languages, that is, it fell apart about 6-7 thousand years ago. Genealogical classification of languages - on the basis of kinship, i.e. common origin. The kinship of any languages is recognized as proven if it is found common origin a significant part of the morphemes of these languages, all grammatical affixes (if any) and many roots.

The main method of research is comparative-historical, the main classification category is a family, a branch, a group of languages.

Genealogical classification is closely connected with the historical fate of languages and peoples. It covers vocabulary and phonetics - the vocabulary of the language and the similarity in sound.

Typological classification

Typological classification of languages - a classification based on the similarity and difference in the linguistic structure (morphological, phonological, syntactic, semantic), regardless of genetic or territorial proximity.

It operates with classes of languages that are combined according to those characteristics that are chosen as reflecting the most significant features of the linguistic structure (for example, the way morphemes are combined). The best known is the morphological classification of languages, according to which languages are distributed through the abstract concept of type into the following four classes:
1) insulating, or amorphous such as Chinese, Vietnamese.
2) agglutinative, or agglutinating, for example, Turkic, some Finno-Ugric, Mongolian, Tungus-Manchu, Korean, Japanese, Basque, part of the Indian.
3) inflectional languages, such as Slavic, Baltic.
4) incorporating (polysynthetic), for example, Chukchi-Kamchatka, some Paleo-Asiatic, Caucasian languages.

Basic concepts typological (morphological) classification - morpheme and word; main criteria: the nature of the morphemes combined in the word(lexical - grammatical), way their associations(pre- or postposition of grammatical morphemes, which is directly related to syntax; agglutination - fusion, which refers to the field of morphonology); morpheme ratio and words(isolation, when a morpheme = a word, analytic/synthetic word formation and inflection) associated with syntax.

The typological classification seeks to characterize not specific languages, in which several morphological types are always represented, but the main structural phenomena and trends that exist in languages.

Modern typology, while maintaining as the most important typological categories the representations developed by the founders of the typology - "analytical type of language", "synthetic type", "agglutination", "fusion", etc. - abandoned the idea of one and general typological classification languages. It became obvious that only one typological classification (for example, morphological) is not enough, since different language levels have their own typologically significant features that are independent of the structure of other language levels. Therefore, in addition to the morphological classification, various other classifications of languages were required: depending on the type of phonological system, the nature of stress, the type of syntax, the type of lexicon, the nature of word formation, the functional (communicative) profile of the language, the type of normative-stylistic structure of the language (in the typology of literary languages and etc.).

Cultural-historical classification

Cultural-historical classification deals almost exclusively with literary and written languages, with written variants of languages that serve ethnic groups of peoples or nations.

The cultural-historical classification examines languages from the point of view of their relationship to the history of culture. In accordance with this classification, which takes into account the historical sequence of the development of culture, unwritten, written languages, literary languages of the people and the nation, languages of interethnic communication are distinguished.

TYPOLOGICAL (MORPHOLOGICAL) CLASSIFICATION OF LANGUAGES

For the first time, the question of the "type of language" of romance was raised. Their thought was this: "the spirit of the people" can manifest itself in myths, in art, in literature and in language. Hence the natural conclusion that through the language you can know the "spirit of the people."

Friedrich Schlegel came to the conclusion: 1) that all languages can be divided into two types: inflectional and affixing, 2) that any language is born and remains in the same type, and 3) that inflectional languages are characterized by "richness, strength and durability", and affixing "with the very emergence lacks living development”, they are characterized by “poverty, scarcity and artificiality”.

The division of languages into inflectional and affixing F. Schlegel did it based on the presence or absence of a change in the root.

Brother F. Schlegel - August-Wilhelm Schlegel(1767-1845) revised the typological classification of his languages and identified three types: 1) inflectional, 2) affixing, 3) amorphous(which is typical of the Chinese language), and in inflected languages, he showed two possibilities of grammatical structure: synthetic and analytical.

Within the limits of the languages available to them, the Schlegel brothers correctly noted the difference between inflectional, agglutinating and isolating languages.

He went much deeper into the question of the types of languages Wilhelm von Humboldt (1767-1835).

Humboldt saw particular criteria for defining languages: 1) in an expression in the language of relations (transfer of relational meanings; this was also the main criterion for the Schlegels); 2) in the way the sentence is formed (which showed a special type of incorporating languages) and 3) in sound form.

In inflecting languages, Humboldt saw not only “internal changes” of the “wonderful root”, but also “addition from the outside”, i.e., affixation, which is carried out differently than in agglutinating languages (a century later, this difference was formulated by E. Sapir. Humboldt explained, that the Chinese language is not amorphous, but isolating, i.e., the grammatical form in it manifests itself differently than in inflectional and agglutinating languages: not by changing words, but by word order and intonation, thus this type is a typically analytical language.

In addition to the three types of languages noted by the Schlegel brothers, Humboldt described a fourth type; the most accepted term for this type is incorporating.

(A feature of this type of languages (Indian in America, Paleo-Asiatic in Asia) is that the sentence is constructed as compound word, i.e., unformed word roots are agglutinated into one common whole, which will be both a word and a sentence. Parts of this whole are both the elements of the word and the members of the sentence. The whole is a word-sentence, where the beginning is the subject, the end is the predicate, and additions with their definitions and circumstances are incorporated (inserted) into the middle. Humboldt explained this with a Mexican example: ninakakwa, where ni is "I", naka is "ed-" (i.e., "eat"), and kwa is the object "meat-". One example from the Chukchi language: you-ata-kaa-nmy-rkyn - “I kill fat deer”, literally: “I-fat-deer-kill-do”, where the skeleton of the “body” is: you-nmy-rkyn, in which is incorporated kaa - "deer" and its definition ata - "fat"; The Chukchi language does not tolerate any other arrangement, and the whole is a word-sentence, where the above order of elements is also observed.)

August Schleicher returned to the Schlegel typological classification, only with a new justification. Schleicher's typological classification does not provide for incorporating languages, but indicates three types in two possibilities: synthetic and analytical.

Simultaneously with Schleicher, he proposed his own classification of types of languages X. Steinthal(1821-1899).. Steinthal divided all languages into languages with form and tongues without form, and by the form one should understand both the form of the word and the form of the sentence. Steinthal called languages with no inflection as joining languages: without a form - the languages of Indochina, with a form - Chinese. Steinthal defined languages with the presence of inflection as modifying, without form: 1) through repetition and prefixes - Polynesian, 2) through suffixes - Turkic, Mongolian, Finno-Ugric, 3) through incorporation - Indian; and modifying, with the form: 1) through the addition of elements - the Egyptian language, 2) through internal inflection - Semitic languages and 3) through "true suffixes" - Indo-European languages.

In the 90s. 19th century revised Steinthal's classification F. Misteli(1893), who carried out the same idea of dividing languages to formal and shapeless, but introduced a new language feature: wordless(Egyptian and Bantu languages), pseudo-words(Turkic, Mongolian, Finno-Ugric languages) and historical(Semitic and Indo-European). Incorporating languages are singled out in a special category of formless languages, since in them the word and the sentence are not distinguished. The advantage of F. Misteli's classification is delimitation of root isolating languages(Chinese) and basic insulating(Malay).

F. N. F i n k(1909) based his classification on the principle of constructing a sentence and the nature of the links between the members of the sentence, in particular the issue of agreement. As a result, Fink shows eight types: 1) Chinese, 2) Greenlandic, 3) Subiya, 4) Turkish, 5) Samoan (and other Polynesian languages), 6) Arabic (and other Semitic languages), 7) Greek (and other Indo-European languages). languages) and 8) Georgian.

Morphological classification of languages F. F. Fortunatova(1892). F. F. Fortunatov takes as a starting point the structure of the word form and the correlation of its morphological parts. On this basis, he distinguishes four types of languages:

1) agglutinating or agglutinating languages... "T. i.e. actually gluing ... because here the stem and affix of words remain, in their meaning, separate parts of words in the forms of words, as if glued together.

2)Semitic languages - inflectional-agglutinative(the relationship between stem and affix in these languages is the same as in agglutinating languages).

3) " Indo-European - inflectional languages.

4) root(like Chinese).

Fortunatov distinguishes Semitic languages - "inflectional-agglutinative" and Indo-European - "inflectional".

Based on their classification E. Sapir puts an expression of different types of concepts in the language: 1 ) root, 2) derivational, 3) mixed-relational and 4) purely relational; the last two points should be understood in such a way that the meanings of relations can be expressed in the words themselves (by changing them).

T. Milevsky divides the languages of the world according to one more principle into four groups: "isolating, agglutinative, inflectional and alternating"

According to one of the most authoritative English-language sites dedicated to the study of the languages of the world, there are currently 7106 languages on earth. This includes only living languages. As some researchers note, many more languages can be distinguished. It depends on how you draw the line between language and dialect. To study such a variety of languages, one should subject them to processing and classification.

Classifications of languages can be based on various principles. Two most commonly used classifications in the scientific literature should be singled out. Namely genealogical (or genetic) and morphological (or typological).

"Genetic classification is the classification of languages on the basis of the presence or absence of their nearest common ancestor." Genealogical classification is based on the principle of kinship, by finding a common origin. "It develops as a result of the study of languages with the help of the comparative historical method" and exists in the form of a single scheme.

The scheme includes the presence of the following bits:

language families - genetic language associations that have a common ancestor (protolanguage); an example of such an association is the family of Indo-European languages, where the common ancestor - the Indo-European language, broke up about 6-7 thousand years ago;

isolated languages (or isolates) - monolingual families (an example is the Basque language);

unclassified languages - little-studied languages that, due to the lack of sufficient data about them, cannot be attributed to any language group.

Currently, some scientists also distinguish the so-called macrofamilies (when some language families have a common ancestor). The existence of most isolated macrofamilies is questioned. The only macrofamilies that have sufficiently substantiated theories of their existence are the Nostratic (it includes the Indo-European, Altai, Ural, and other families) and the Afroasian macrofamilies. Sometimes these two macrofamilies are combined into one macrofamily.

When constructing a unified classification of languages based on the genetic principle, scientists encounter some difficulties in distinguishing between truly native languages and those that "married" in the course of their development. historical development. "Language changes, as you know, in a language occur, firstly, in the course of the so-called vertical transmission, vertical transmission from the older generation to the younger and, secondly, which is very important, in the course of horizontal transmission - the transfer of elements from one language to the other in the course of interlingual contacts". Because the language does not exist in isolation, but is very often subject to changes from the outside, a huge number of various kinds of borrowings appear. Because of this influence of some languages on others, it is sometimes difficult for historical linguists (comparativeists) to distinguish a language family from a language union formed in the process of interaction of languages. Textbook examples should be considered such pairs of languages as Chinese and Japanese, in which there is a huge percentage of Chinese vocabulary, and French and English (80% of the English vocabulary is borrowed from French).

"The typological classification of languages arose later than the attempts at genealogical classification and proceeded from other premises." In contrast to genealogical classification, morphological classification is based on similarities and differences in linguistic structure. It is based on the formal aspect. Such linguists as A. Schlegel, H. Steinthal, W. Humboldt, A. Schleicher and the American linguist E. Sapir participated in the creation of this classification.

In the morphological classification, 4 types of languages are distinguished: root, inflectional, agglutinative and incorporating.

Root (amorphous, isolating or root isolating) languages are languages that are characterized by a complete or almost complete absence of inflection. In such languages, word order is of great grammatical significance. This group includes such languages as Chinese, Vietnamese, Dungan, Muong. It is also considered that English language develops in this direction.

Inflectional (or fusional) languages are languages that are characterized by a developed system of inflection. They have the ability to convey a whole range of grammatical meanings with one indicator. For example, in the word "at home?" the ending "a" conveys the meaning of gender (masculine), number (plural) and case (nominative). This group should include Slavic, Baltic, Italic and some of the Indian and Iranian languages.

Agglutinative (or agglutinative) languages are languages that also have a developed inflection system, but unlike inflectional languages, in agglutinative languages, each grammatical meaning has its own indicator. an example is the Komi-Permyak word "sin" (eye). In the creative plural it looks like "synnezon", where the morpheme "nez" is an indicator of the plural, and the morpheme "on" is an indicator of the instrumental case. In this example, we see that the morphemes that form the grammatical form of a word are added after the root. Such agglutination is called postfigure. Also, agglutination can be prefiguring when morphemes are attached before the root. Bilateral agglutination is possible, when some morphemes are attached before the root, and others, respectively, after.

Obviously, a classification that is free from the shortcomings of the traditional morphological classification of languages "(vagueness of basic concepts, non-delimitation of heterogeneous classification criteria, undeveloped ideas about necessary and sufficient criteria, inconsistency with specific language structures) and also includes phonological, syntactic, semantic characteristics of the structure of the language, at present time cannot yet be created." It should be understood that it is impossible to fully attribute the language to any one specific type. It may contain features of several types, it can move from one group to another in the course of evolution. It is important to understand that this or that language belongs to any group according to its prevailing characteristics.

In addition to the two classifications presented, it will not be superfluous to mention others. tongue glottogenesis agglutinative

Firstly, languages can be divided according to one more grammatical feature - syntactic, into two classes:

synthetic languages - languages in which the syntactic roles of words are determined by a developed system of inflections and affixes (Russian language);

analytical languages are languages where the syntactic roles of words are determined by functional words (particles and prepositions) and word order (English).

It should be said that languages can be natural (actually, which are presented in the genealogical classification) and artificially created (or constructed). The second class includes one of the most famous artificially created languages - Esperanto. There is also a class of fictional languages. The difference between fictional languages and artificial ones lies in the purpose of their creation. Artificial languages are invented for real communication. Usually such languages are really studied and used in certain circles. Fictional languages are languages from fiction or other works of art, invented by the authors to create languages of non-existent worlds. Examples of such languages from literature are the Elvish and other languages of the Mediterranean, invented by Tolkien. Also, the Na "vi language from James Cameron's Avatar movie should be attributed to fictional languages, where the fictional language even has its own dictionary. If artificial languages \u200b\u200bare exclusively practical, then fictional languages \u200b\u200bare created for aesthetic purposes.

Natural languages that are not included in the genealogical classification should also include contact languages (pidgins, creoles and various mixed languages). Contact languages are usually created on the basis of several languages in a natural way as a result of communication between people, ethnic groups who speak different languages. An example is Spanglish, which originated from English and Spanish.

V scientific papers you can find a huge number of classifications based on various aspects. The list presented here is far from exhaustive.

The most common and widely known is the genetic or genealogical classification, which is based on the concept of linguistic kinship and the family tree metaphor. This metaphor interprets the relationship of languages as their origin from some common proto-language. Externally, linguistic kinship manifests itself materially - in the similarity of the sound of significant elements (morphemes, words) with a close meaning (such elements are recognized as etymologically identical, i.e. having a common origin, cm. ETYMOLOGY). The material similarity of closely related languages (for example, Russian and Belarusian) can be so significant that it makes them high degree mutually intelligible. However, material similarity alone is not enough to recognize languages as related; it can be explained by intensive borrowings: there are languages in which the number of borrowings exceeds half of the vocabulary. To recognize kinship, it is necessary that the material similarity be systematic, i.e. differences between etymologically identical elements should be regular and obey phonetic laws. Material similarity is sometimes accompanied by structural similarity, i.e. similarity in the grammatical structure of languages. Thus, the genetically close Russian and Bulgarian languages are grammatically very different, while there can be significant structural similarities between completely unrelated languages. The French linguist E. Benveniste at one time demonstrated the structural proximity between the languages of the Indo-European language family and the Indian language Takelma, common in the US state of Oregon and having no material similarity with the Indo-European languages.

The justification of linguistic kinship, which is recognized as strictly scientific, is carried out with the help of the so-called comparative-historical, or comparative method. It establishes regular correspondences between languages and thus describes the transition from some initial common state (reconstructed proto-language) to actually existing languages. In practice, however, genealogical groupings are initially distinguished on the basis of a superficial intuitive assessment of material similarity, and only then a foundation is laid under the hypotheses about genealogical relationship and a search for the parent language is carried out. One of the largest practitioners of genealogical classification, J. Greenberg, attempted a methodological justification for such an approach, which he called the method of mass, or multilateral comparison. However, for many quite universally recognized language groups, comparative historical reconstruction has not been carried out to this day, and even in not all cases there is confidence that it can be carried out in principle (this is especially true for language groupings in which there is not a single language with a long written language). tradition). The method, which occupies an intermediate place between comparative historical reconstruction and impressionistic comparison, is a special kind of lexico-statistical method called glottochronological ( cm. GLOTTOCHRONOLOGY) and proposed in the middle of the 20th century. American linguist M. Swadesh.

When comparing, hierarchical family relations of languages are established, uniting two or more languages into a certain grouping; they can later be combined into larger groupings, and so on. Terms denoting hierarchically ordered genetic groups are still not used very consistently. The most common in the domestic nomenclature is the following hierarchy: dialect - language - (subgroup) - group - (subfamily / branch) - family - (macrofamily). In foreign terminology, the term “fila” introduced by Swadesh and its derivatives are sometimes also used; other terms are occasionally encountered. In practice, one and the same genetic grouping can be called a group by one author, and a family by another (or even the same one elsewhere). The term "macrofamily" began to be used much later than the other designations listed; its appearance is associated primarily with attempts to deepen linguistic reconstruction, as well as with the realization of the fact that traditionally distinguished families differ greatly in the degree of divergence of their languages (and in the estimated time of decay of the proto-language corresponding to one or another family). The decay time, for example, of the Afroasian proto-language, according to modern estimates, dates back to the 9th–8th millennium BC. or even earlier, the Turkic - by the end of the 1st millennium BC, and the Mongolian at all in the 16th-17th centuries. AD At the same time, the Semitic-Hamitic (= Afroasian), Turkic and Mongolian language families were traditionally meant. At present, the designation of the Afroasian languages as a macrofamily has become established, and the Mongolian languages are often defined as a group.

The idea of the development of languages as an exclusively divergent process of the disintegration of a single proto-language into descendant languages increasingly moving away from each other, which was finally established in neogrammatism, has been repeatedly criticized. One of its main positions was an indication that in the development of languages there are not only divergent (divergence), but also convergent (convergence due to parallel development and especially language contacts) development, which significantly complicates a simple circuit. However, the lists of world languages in reference publications are always ordered in accordance with the genealogical classification, while all other classifications are of an auxiliary nature and are used purely for research, and not for "reference and presentation" purposes.

Typological principle

These include, first of all, classifications that involve the unification of languages into certain groups based on similarities and differences in their grammatical structure. Such classifications, called (structural-)typological, have been known since the beginning of the 19th century. Since the grammar of a language is complex and multifaceted, many different typological classifications can be built. The most famous classifications are:

- on the basis of the technique used to combine significant units in a word (there are inflectional, agglutinative, isolating and incorporating, or polysynthetic languages);

– based on the ways of encoding semantic roles in a sentence and their combination into various hyperroles (languages of accusative-nominative, ergative and active systems differ);

- on the basis of whether this connection is marked in the main or dependent element of a syntactically connected construction (languages with vertex and dependency coding);

- based on the laws of word order, the relationship between syllable and morpheme, etc. More about the various typological classifications cm. TYPOLOGY LINGUISTIC.

Geographic principle

Languages can also be classified geographically. For example, on the basis of geographical criteria, Caucasian or African languages are distinguished, and in the names of more fractional groups, definitions such as “northern”, “western” or “central” are very often present. It is obvious that such classifications are external to the actual linguistic facts. There are language families (for example, Austronesian) and even individual languages (for example, English, Spanish or French), distributed over vast and often not bordering territories. On the other hand, there are many places in the world where native speakers of languages who are not closely related by linguistic kinship live in a compact area. Such is the Caucasus, where they speak the languages of various branches of the Indo-European family, the Kartvelian, Abkhaz-Adyghe, Nakh-Dagestan and Turkic languages, and even the Kalmyk language belonging to the Mongolian family. Such are the east of India, many regions of Africa, the island of New Guinea.

At the same time, there is linguistically significant content in geographical classifications. Firstly, the peoples living in the neighborhood and their languages are still more often than not related by origin. reconstruction does not exist, and it is not known if it can be obtained at all; the same is true of the many native languages of the Americas. Secondly, unrelated or, in any case, not closely related languages of peoples living in the neighborhood and in close contact often acquire common features due to convergent development. For example, in some geographic areas, all or many languages show similarities in phonological systems. Thus, in Europe, most languages distinguish between the main (primary) stress and one or more secondary stresses, and almost all distinguish voiceless stops (such as p, t, k) from voiced (such as b, d, g). In East and Southeast Asia, many languages use pitch or syllabic tone movement to differentiate words; in the West North America a fairly large number of geographically adjacent languages have a special class of sounds called glottalized. Neighboring languages often show similar tendencies in the development of syntax. In western Europe, both the Romance and Germanic languages developed verb phrases with auxiliary verbs (have gone, is done etc.).

Sociolinguistic principle

On the status of various classifications

Speaking not about the internal content, but about the logical structure of the three main classifications, it is necessary to note at least two important differences that exist between them. This is, firstly, the difference between "natural" classifications (genealogical and areal) and "artificial" typological classifications. The latter are built in accordance with the criteria chosen by the researcher and therefore are fundamentally multiple; the first two classifications tend to reflect the natural order of things, they are supposed not to be imposed on a multitude of languages, but to be “discovered” in a given multitude. Therefore, the presence of several different genealogical or typological classifications of linguistic material is not considered as a different interpretation of the material based on its heterogeneity, but as evidence of the imperfection of our knowledge.

Secondly, the genealogical and typological classifications break up the entire set of languages, while the areal classification only singles out individual convergences in it on the basis of linguistic affinity. Of course, with any classification of anything, some “remainder” is usually formed, and there are also controversial cases, but in the areal classification, the main part of the world's languages falls into such a remnant, and this is not especially acutely experienced. At the same time, within the framework of the genealogical classification, the presence of languages \u200b\u200bthat cannot be classified, forming single-element groups (such as the Greek, Armenian and Albanian languages \u200b\u200bthat are isolated as part of the Indo-European family, or that do not fall into any of the sections of the classification of the Basque language or the Burushaski language in Kashmir), and also a large number of taxa of the highest rank (usually called language families) is seen as a challenge to the principle of genealogical classification. As for the typological classification, with an appropriate choice of classification parameters, it is quite possible to give it the character of a non-residual division.

Given these two circumstances, in a certain sense, the "main" of the three listed classifications (natural and ideally exhaustive) turns out to be genealogical. Its special status in practice is manifested in the fact that when characterizing any idioethnic language, its genetic affiliation is necessarily indicated, i.e. entry into one or another grouping of related languages. If such information is missing, then this is specifically reported as one of the most important features of the given language.