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Words and Languages

Obviously, words are the component structures of language; they combine to form sentences and come in eight different varieties called parts of speech. However, the very word word can be defined in multiple ways, depending on the context in which it is used. In this section we will examine the definitions and classifications of words, the divergent evolution of languages, and the memetic analysis of competing words within a language.

Definitions of the Word

The word word is, oddly enough, regularly used by linguists in two very different and distinct ways. The first is what we all think of as a word: a sequence of letters, or the sounds they represent, that has a specific referent and is used in forming phrases or sentences. In this sense, the, dog, fly, and blackboard are all words, but expressions such as beat around the bush are not. This is the syntactic atom sense of the word.

The other definition of word is sometimes referred to as a listeme, defined by Steven Pinker in The Language Instinct as "an element of language that must be memorized because its sound or meaning does not conform to some general rule. All word roots, irregular forms, and idioms are listemes" (p.478). In this sense, the expression beat around the bush is a word, because its meaning cannot be predicted from its components. Listemes correspond to entries in the mental dictionary.

Classification of Words

Words (in the sense of syntactic atoms) are classified according to the roles they play in a sentence; these classifications are called parts of speech. All words belong to one of the eight categories, but many words are classified as two or more parts of speech. The eight parts of speech are: noun, verb, adjective, adverb, pronoun preposition, conjunction, interjection. Each plays a different role in sentences, and some can even become headwords of phrases that go on to play syntactic roles ordinarily filled by single words.

Nouns, of course, name people, objects, places or concepts; examples include mother, books, backyard, and happiness. They are divided into two categories: concrete and abstract. The first three examples above are concrete nouns; the last is an abstract noun. Nouns are closely linked to pronouns, whose function in a sentence is to replace a previously-established noun for brevity. An example is When I saw the book on the shelf, I wondered about it.

Adjectives play the important role of modifying nouns in a noun phrase or a sentence. Examples of adjectives include green, tall, complete, and lovely. Articles such as a, and, and the are also considered adjectives. In this way a noun phrase can be built: the green books, a small mouse.

Verbs denote actions or states of being, and come in multiple forms. Their "pure" form is the infinitive, which in English is a construction like to play, to cry, or to be. Verb forms change according to the noun that is acting as the verb's subject; compare I walk with he walks. In some languages, subject pronouns are superfluous because the verb ending corresponds to a given subject. Verbs also indicate time through their tense; compare I walk, I walked, and I shall walk.

Verbs also use auxiliary or helping verbs to indicate more complicated tense or structure. For example, he is walking implies an ongoing action, and he has walked means that he once walked, but now is not walking. Verbs can also change voice: the active I hit is distinct from I was hit. Finally, certain verb form can be used as other parts of speech, such as nouns (Walking is fun.) and adjectives (Walking past the store, I looked in the window.)

Verbs are modified by adverbs, which include words like pleasantly, fast, and quietly. They indicate manner or method: I walked fast, she smiled pleasantly. Sometimes words that are normally nouns can act as adverbs, as in we went home.

Prepositions are words like of, around, and within; they indicate location and can modify both nouns and verbs. Conjunctions are mainly grammatical function words, such as and, but, or for. Finally, interjections are words that are grammatically isolated and generally express emotion, such as ouch!, hey!, and oops!.

The Divergent Evolution of Languages

It is not clear at this point how many times language evolved independently; some linguists suggest that it may have arisen only once, and that all modern languages have a common ancestor. While this is in the realm of speculation, it is certain that modern languages can be grouped into families that descended from a common ancestor language for that family.

Correlations between languages certainly support the idea that they are all descended from a common root. Some small groupings are obvious - such as the English correlation with Germanic languages and the Romance languages' descent from Latin. However, some correlations are more ancient and are not immediately obvious, often because the languages have evolved separately for a much longer period of time. Nevertheless, similarities remain and are easy to spot if one looks in the proper places. For example, the English verb is is very close to Greek esti, Latin est, and even Sanskrit asti. These affinities are so close and so common that linguists have deduced that whole subgroups of languages, such as Germanic, Romance, Slavic, and Celtic, are actually derived from one common source, called Proto-Indo-European.

Linguists have used similarities between languages to reconstruct a partial vocabulary and grammar for Proto-Indo-European; they have even been able to derive certain explanations of how the various modern languages evolved from it. Based on analyses of the reconstructed words, linguists believe the speakers of Proto-Indo-European to have been a farming people of the late Neolithic, living somewhere in northern Europe or southern Russia. They have been linked to the Kurgan tribe living southern Russia around 3500 BCE, and a more controversial theory places them in modern Turkey as the first farmers.

Other language families have also been reconstructed. Northern European languages such as Finnish are included in the Uralic family, which descended from the language of a group once living in central Russia. The languages of Africa, Asia, and the Americas are relatively fragmented, suggesting extended periods of isolation.

Linguistic Superfamilies

Some linguists aggressively combine language families into larger and larger groups. For example, one group of linguists seeks to combine reconstructed words of Proto-Indo-European, Proto-Uralic, and two more precursor languages into one larger early language called Nostratic. They argue that Nostratic was spoken by hunter-gatherers who originated somewhere in the Middle East.

Going even further into highly speculative territory, some lump Nostratic with another reconstruction called Amerind, derived from American Indian languages. Sino-Caucasian is formed from Asian language families, and some take this to its logical conclusion and combine these two combinations into one progenitor language dubbed SCAN.

If all the combinations of these linguists are accepted, they would lead to six world language families: SCAN in Eurasia, the Americas, and upper Africa; Austric in Southeast Asia and the Pacific; Khoisan and Congo-Saharan in lower Africa; Australian; and New Guinean. Some genetic evidence indicates that these language groupings correlate at least roughly with the distributions of genetic differences among modern peoples.

Memes and Words

Words, as memes, are made or broken by virtue of their replicative power. Words that are too long or unpleasant-sounding will not be used often; those that are shorter and more mellifluous will be used more, and therefore will become more common. Ease of spelling and pronunciation are also major factors when people decide, either consciously or subconsciously, which word to use in a given context. This is why beauty is used more commonly that pulchritude, though they both mean the same thing.

The same phenomenon can be seen with the very word meme, which has a synonym culturgen that was coined at approximately the same time. As Richard Dawkins recounts in his foreword to Susan Blackmore's The Meme Machine, the word meme has vastly outcompeted culturgen, probably because of the similarity between meme and gene, and all the corresponding coinages it invites (i.e., meme pool, memotype). This could also be a "self-reinforcing positive feedback effect" (p.xiv) in which the higher prevalence of meme gives it an even greater edge against the lagging culturgen. Today, a search on AltaVista yielded 11,007 results for memetic (chosen to eliminate confusion from French meme) and 30 results for culturgen.

Guess That Word!

If you are intrigued by the similarities between languages, test your word-etymology skills with Guess That Word, a fun and educational challenge to your knowledge of languages!

Looking Further: Links and References

The following links and references are useful in the study of words and languages.

• Books
  • The Language Instinct by Steven Pinker
  • How the Mind Works by Steven Pinker
  • Words and Rules by Steven Pinker
  • The Meme Machine by Susan Blackmore

• Websites
  • Linguistics FAQ
  • Linguistic Society of America
  • Language Families by Kryss Katsiavriades
  • Language and Language Family Information
  • Chapters 3 and 8 of The Language Instinct by Steven Pinker
  • Language Miniatures - collection of language essays by William Z. Shetter

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