A Basic Course in Anthropological Linguistics (Studies in Linguistic ...

82 A BASIC COURSE IN ANTHROPOLOGICAL LINGUISTICS
cm = callme
2dA = today
wan2 = want to
ruok = AreyouOK?
2moro = tomorrow
g2g = gotta “got to” go
LINGUISTIC TYPOLOGY
The ways in which morphemes are used to construct words provide a rationale
for classifying languages. For example, Turlush, Basque, and a number of
indigenous American languages use suffixes abundantly in the construction of
their words. They are thus characterized as agglutinative. Languages using
prefixes abundantly are much less numerous. Thai is one example. Infixation
is a minor component of English morphology-mouse vs. mice-but it is a
major component of the morphology of many Semitic languages. Most
languages employ affixes of various types in word formation to lesser or greater
degrees. Mixation, thus, can be used to class@ languages in terms of fiequency
and type of affixes used.
Another morphemic criterion used in classification is the relative number
of morphemes employed in word construction and the degree of fusion among
them. The theoretical extreme is one morpheme per word. The language that
tends to form its words in this way is known as an isolating language. Chinese
is an isolating language, although it too uses affixes, but less frequently than
other languages do. As mentioned above, languages that make up their words
frequently with combinations of morphemes, such as Latin, are known as
agglutinative.
Edward Sapir (1921) developed one of the flrst elaborate systems for
classifying languages on the basis of morphological criteria. He took into
consideration both the number of morphemes used in word formation
(isolating, agglutinative, and fusional) and the degree of synthesis in the
formation process (analytic, synthetic, and polysynthetic). For example, the
English words goodness and depth are similar in that they are composed of a
root morpheme (good and deep) and a suffix (-ness and -th). The word depth,
however, shows a greater degree of synthesis, since it shows a fusion of the
root and suffix morphemes, whereas goodness just shows the suffix added to
the root with no phonic changes.