Ethnologue: Language FamilyIndex

Preface

This is a computer produced index to the language families that are associated with the languages listed in Ethnologue: Languages of theWorld, Thirteenth Edition, 1996. For each language it gives the main name, its three-letter Language Identification Code, the country with which the language is most centrally identified, and the language family under which it is currently classified, from the most comprehensive grouping down to the smallest. From this listing the reader can go directly to the main entry in theEthnologue itself, which in turn points to entries for the same language in other countries if there are any.

As in the Ethnologue, the criterion for listing speech varieties separately is low intelligibility, as far as that can be ascertained. Some scholars prefer to keep dialect chains and networks unbroken; it is more consistent with what we now know about such configurations, however, to partition them into optimal clusters within which intelligibility is high and between which intelligibility is low (J. Grimes 1989, 1995). The Ethnologue lists speech varieties that show high intelligibility with some central variety as dialects within a single entry; the dialects do not appear in this listing, but are in the Ethnologue.

The classification scheme used here is largely that of the Oxford University Press International Encyclopedia of Linguistics, William O. Bright, editor in chief, which appeared in 1992. As the Co-Editors for Language Identification, we worked closely with Bright, Bernard Comrie, and the other editors to achieve a reasonable representation for the Encyclopedia of what is known about language families of the world. The classification information in the Ethnologue of 1996 still reflects the scheme followed in the Encyclopedia fairly closely, but incorporates some more recent classifications. The Ethnologue goes into greater low level detail than the Encyclopedia for some groupings.

For Austronesian languages, the Comparative Austronesian Dictionary, 1995, Darrell Tryon, editor, is followed. For Afro-Asiatic languages, Omotic tentatively replaces West Cushitic and stands as a separate branch of Afro-Asiatic. Changes in other language groupings have also been entered as more recent comparative studies have become available.

We are well aware that few classifications are airtight, and that there are good arguments for other groupings. Where the information is available, we give priority to classifications based on shared structural and lexical innovations, as opposed to lexicostatistical, purely typological, or impressionistic subgroupings.

What is presented here represents the current state of our data base, not aclaim to definitiveness. This should pose no problem for specialists engaged in the study of the languages concerned, though we must beg them to recognize that to include all possible proposals for classification (including their own), or to present a history of classifications, would change this from a simplereference to a very different kind of work. At the same time, we look forward to examining the arguments for what we hope will be more firmly grounded classifications with a view to a future edition.

In the area of remote comparisons we adopt a conservative stance, as is appropriate in a publication that focuses more on the branches of trees than on the roots. Not only do we omit proposals such as proto-Human and Nostratic and Amerind, but we have even kept Baltic and Slavic separate at the highest level within Indo-European, simply because the evidence at that level does not appear as clear-cut as does the evidence for other groupings at about the same level of remoteness.

Several nongenetic categories are presented along with the genetic groupings for want of a better way to fit them into the index: creole languages, pidgins, language isolates, languages that remain unclassified, deaf sign languages, and other sign languages. There are also language isolates and unclassified languages listed within genetic groupings.

As better information has become available, we have shifted some language names from where they were in earlier editions of the Ethnologue. Some speech varieties that had been listed as dialects under a single language are now treated as separate entries because of low intelligibility or incompatible social attitudes, and some varieties that had been listed as separate languages are now combined because of high intelligibility. Others have been merged because of earlier confusion of language names with people names and geographic names. Usually the reason for changing a main name has to do with information about which name speakers of the language itself prefer; names imposed by outsiders seem to be all too often less than complimentary.

Each page of this index begins with the highest grouping name to which the first language on that page belongs (with a few exceptions where the computer missed the highest grouping), followed by the entire pedigree from more inclusive to least inclusive groupings. After each grouping name there is acount of the number of distinct language entries listed under that subgrouping.

The languages within a subgroup are listed in alphabetical order. So are the subgroupings within a larger grouping. This is not the general practice of comparative linguists, who often use ordering to show either geographic topology or degrees of closeness in a way that a family tree as such does not convey well; but for a general index like this one, alphabetic ordering is essential for finding things. We have followed our sources in using conventional symbols for click sounds in language names, such as /, //, !, and ", used to write names of Khoisan languages and a few others in southern Africa. A plus sign is used in place of barred "i" in language names.


Copies of this Ethnologue Language Family Index, the Ethnologue itself, and the Ethnologue Language Name Index may be obtained from:

Summer Institute of Linguistics
International Academic Bookstore
7500 West Camp Wisdom Road
Dallas, Texas 75236-5699 USA
Tel: (972) 708-7404
Fax: (972) 708-7433
E-mail: [email protected]
Web: http://www.sil.org/acpub/catalog

Part of the Ethnologue Language Family Index, Joseph E. Grimes and Barbara F. Grimes, Editors.
Copyright © 1996, Summer Institute of Linguistics, Inc. All rightsreserved.

[Language Family Index]

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