LANGUAGES, CLASSIFICATION OF

placement of languages into families or phyla on the basis of lexical or typological similarity or shared ancestry. Languages may thus be classified either genetically or typologically. A genetic classification assumes that certain languages are related in that they have evolved from a common ancestral language. This form of classification employs ancient records (such as those for Latin) as well as hypothetical reconstructions of the earlier forms of languages, called protolanguages. Because information on the genetic affiliations of languages is sufficiently extensive, world surveys of languages are necessarily oriented in that waysometimes exclusively so and sometimes in conjunction with typological classifications. Typological classification is based on similarities in language structure. Individual frames of reference in language typology are not known well enough to permit a worldwide typological classification. Before the conclusive demonstration that unwritten languages could be classified genetically, they were often relegated to a typological classification, which at one time was denigrated by scholars. Since 1917, however, the prestige of some kinds of typology has risenin particular, that of grammatical typology. The best-known typological frame of reference represents the grammar of a language, either as a whole or as a subsystem. Once a genetic classification has been established, typological classification may be superimposed on it in order to show change of language typeas from a predominantly inflectional language (such as Proto-Germanic) to a predominantly isolating one (such as modern English)or to show features that are shared by languages in neighbouring branches in the same family (e.g., Celtic and Germanic in Indo-European). The ultimate grammatical typology is that which treats subsystems that are, in some sense, universal to all human languages. Lexical typologies, based on similarities in vocabulary structure, have been used in cognitive anthropology and psycholinguistics (e.g., perception of colours and use of colour terms). The sociolinguistic frame of reference in typology provides classifications for varieties of language in terms of their functions and their ways of identifying social groups and cultural spaces; in addition, it brings order and integration to problems concerning national standards that are faced by new nations that have many nonstandard and unwritten languages as well as languages that make use of writing. A few points of terminology should be explained before further discussion of the world's languages is afforded. Language family is the label often used for a conservative genetic classification, one that can be attested only when an abundance of cognates (related words) is available. Phylum is the label for a liberal genetic classification that is attested with fewer cognates; it encompasses language families. Although a given phylum will have greater extension than any of the families included in it, only fragments of phonology will be reconstructible in the protolanguage. In actual linguistic usage, however, the term family is often employed to refer to a group that is technically a phylume.g., the Afro-Asiatic (Hamito-Semitic) family, the Sino-Tibetan family. The label language isolate is used for a language that is the only representative of a language family, as Basque or the extinct Sumerian language; the presumptive but unknown sister languages of isolates are dead and unrecorded. A language isolate may be classified, along with normal language families, under the rubric of an extensive phylum (e.g., Korean is sometimes classified as a member of a hypothetical Ural-Altaic phylum) or left wholly unclassified (e.g., the Ainu language of Japan). The label pidgin-creole is used for a language that has had so much vocabulary change that cognates for reconstructing the protolanguage from which it descended cannot be found. A pidgin is a contact language used for communication between groups having different native languages. When a pidgin becomes the native language of a community it is customarily called a creole. Facets of the subject of language and human communication are treated in a variety of articles. For a full account of the theory and methods of linguistic science, see the article linguistics. For information on such subjects as the characteristics of language, language variants (slang, jargon), speech production, and the acquisition of language, see the articles language, dialect, and slang. For a full account of phonetics and the pathology of speech, see the articles phonetics and speech. For information on written languages and writing systems, see the article writing. Additional reading E.H. Sturtevant, Linguistic Change (1917, reprinted 1961), was an important text in Indo-European comparative linguistics, until replaced by Winfred P. Lehmann, Historical Linguistics: An Introduction (1962). Edward Sapir, Language: An Introduction to the Study of Speech (1921, reprinted 1957), presents a revision of the 19th-century whole-language typology. For an example of modern application of subsystem typology, see A.K. Ramanujan and Colin Masica, Toward a Phonological Typology of the Indian Linguistic Area, in Thomas A. Sebeok (ed.), Current Trends in Linguistics, vol. 5 (1969), pp. 543577; and for an example of lexical domain typology, see Brent Berlin and Paul Kay, Basic Color Terms: Their Universality and Evolution (1969). Antoine Meillet and Marcel Cohen (eds.), Les Langues du monde, new ed. (1952), is a survey of languages of the world organized in terms of their genetic classification. Languages are also classified genetically in two more recent surveys: C.F. and F.M. Voegelin, Languages of the World, in Anthropological Linguistics, vol. 68 (196466); and Thomas A. Sebeok (ed.), Current Trends in Linguistics, 13 vol. in 20 (196375)individual volumes deal with geographic areas, and typological information on particular languages is presented. Variation in proposals for remote genetic relationships among the same set of languages is exemplified in two essays, both found in Thomas A. Sebeok (ed.), Current Trends in Linguistics, vol. 8, part 1 (1971): Joseph H. Greenberg, The Indo-Pacific Hypothesis, pp. 807871; and Stephen A. Wurm, The Papuan Linguistic Situation, pp. 541657. Edward Sapir, Central and North American Languages, in Encyclopdia Britannica, 14th ed. (1929), presented a classification of these languages in terms of six phyla; this classification was revised by a conference of specialists that resulted in the publication of C.F. and F.M. Voegelin (comps.), Map of North American Indian Languages, rev. ed. (1967). The culture areas of North American Indians are described in Harold E. Driver, Indians of North America, 2nd ed. rev. (1969). Charles F. Voegelin Florence M. Voegelin