Help of Typology in Understanding Human History

How Language Typology Helps Understand Human History

We tend to picture ancient fossils or cave paintings when we think about human history. But there’s a less obvious, equally important tool that has been helping researchers piece together the puzzle of our past: language typology.

Typology is a system of comparing and classifying languages based on their features, like word order, sounds, or sentence structure. It doesn’t reveal directly which languages are “related”, but it can reveal fantastic patterns that give clues about ancient migrations, cultural exchanges, and contact between communities across time. Let’s take a look at some examples of how typology can actually help us uncover our shared human story.

Tracing Humanity’s Roots

Our written history only dates back about 5,000 years (around 3100–3000 BCE), but humans existed long before that. Without written records from those early periods, researchers rely on tools from different fields like genetics, archaeology, and linguistics. Typology is one of the interesting ones among them. To set an example, Atkinson’s 2011 study proposed that human language might have originated in Africa, based on the patterns in phonemic diversity, the theory which aligns with the “Out of Africa” hypothesis for human migration. While the study isn’t conclusive on its own, it’s a great example of how linguistic patterns can support broader historical theories.

Language and Migration

Language can leave clues behind in surprising times and places. An example named the Viking Expansion takes place for the proof of this theory. Words like “-by” and “-thorp” found across regions like Yorkshire and the East Midlands prove a strong Old Norse presence, providing linguistic evidence of migration and settlement. This research, done aside by archeological evidence, gives researchers the opportunity to explore how people interacted with each other in new lands.

Language Contact

Thanks to social media and globalization, people mix languages all the time nowadays. Teens, especially, blend slang from different languages daily. But this isn’t a new phenomenon. Language contact is also a major part of human history. In the past, people came into contact through trade, conquest, migration, and diplomacy. One of the best examples of historical language contact is the Balkan Sprachbund, a group of Balkan languages that share common features even though they aren’t closely related. Languages like Bulgarian, Albanian, Romanian, Greek, and Turkish have structural similarities in terms of grammar and vocabulary. Researchers argue about the degrees of “Balkanness” in each language, but they agree on one thing: there was significant contact and influence between these languages and cultures over time.

Cultural Exchange with Language

Languages don’t just carry grammar rules and sounds. They carry a culture. Cultural exchange often leaves behind traces in idioms, sayings, and proverbs. A good example for that will be the Turkish proverb “Tencere dibin kara, seninki benden kara” which roughly translates to “The pot calling the kettle black.” It would be normal if the English and Turkish expressions shared only the same meaning. However, they also use nearly identical metaphors. This could be pure coincidence, or it might reflect deeper cultural connections or shared influences through trade or other interactions. Either way, studying idioms across languages could offer clues about how ideas and values were exchanged between cultures in past.

Language typology offers a unique way to understand where we come from. It can support theories grouped with genetics or archaeology, trace human migrations and language contact. As people continue to study language patterns, they not only learn more about words but also more about themselves.

References

Tomić, O.M. (2006). Introduction. In: Balkan Sprachbund Morpho-Syntactic Features. Studies in Natural Language and Linguistic Theory, vol 67. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/1-4020-4488-7_1

Atkinson, Quentin D. 2011. Phonemic diversity supports a serial founder effect model of language expansion from Africa. Science 332. 346–349.

Kershaw, J., & Røyrvik, E. C. (2016). The ‘People of the British Isles’ project and Viking settlement in England. Antiquity, 90(354), 1670–1680. doi:10.15184/aqy.2016.193

Britannica. (n.d.). Sumerian language. Encyclopaedia Britannica. December 8, 2024, https://www.britannica.com/topic/Sumerian-language