Universals

[Becky Walker]

1. Farsi is considered a subject-object-verb language. It contains 6 vowels, and the 23 consonants include the labial (m, p, v, f, b), alveolar (n, t, d, s, z, rr, r, l) , postaveolar (ch, jh), palatal (j), velar (n, k, g, x, y), uvular (g), and glottal sounds (h). Farsi has few prefixes, but relies heavily on suffixes.Spanish is also considered a SOV language, which has helped my understanding of Farsi, as I can relate it to another language in which I have already begun learning. However, Spanish appears to have a more flexible concept of the SOV structure than Farsi, as subjects are not always necessary in Spanish. Spanish is synthetic as it uses inflection to indicate both number and gender for nouns and adjectives.2. I am studying syntax and word order in hopes of understanding how the language itself is structured. This will allow me to aurally understand the language when I can anticipate what types of words fall where within a sentence.3. I will focus on learning the proper suffixes that change adjectives to nouns, or other cross-grouping suffixes in order to expand upon my vocabulary and description abilities. Also, prefixes and suffixes will allow me to conjugate verbs in a variety of tenses as well.Problems for Review:Japanese is considered to be agglutinative as it combines multiple morphemes in order to form words. The example given displays this. It take the root “mi” which is a morpheme, adds a polite suffix “mash” and adds “i” on the end to indicate tense. Though some of these morphemes can stand alone in Japanese, such as mi, it needs a root to indicate its meaning, as mi can represent numerous things. Ikimashita follows this pattern as well, with ‘mash’, ‘i' and ‘ta’ all being included. The only aspect of the word that changes is the root, which is now iki. If ikimashita were to be a in the simple past as opposed to a more complex version of the past, ikimashita nad mimashita would not bear the same resemblance.Greek on the other hand is considered a synthetic language. Greek has variations in sound depending on the combination of letters in a word, and words in a sentence. In the example given, the ending ‘a’ indicates the inflection as the verb determines the subject (first person singular). Bébēka follows the same pattern—a duplicated form of the root, with the suffix indicating the subject.