Английский язык. Ч. 1. Гималетдинова Г.К - 15 стр.

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respects by every recognized scholar in the field and remain unaltered for all time.
      General linguistics is concerned with human language as a universal and rec-
ognizable part of human behaviour, perhaps one of the most essential to human life
as we know it, and one of the most far-reaching of human capabilities in relation to
the whole span of mankind’s achievements. Needless to say, there is no ‘general
language’ as the specific subject-matter of linguistics other than and apart from the
numerous and so far uncounted different languages spoken in the world. But the
general linguist, in the sense of the specialist is not as such involved with any one or
more of them to a greater extent than with any others. As an impractical ideal he
would know something about every language; this is, of course, impossible, and in
practice most linguists concentrate on a limited number of languages including their
native one, the number of languages studied, and the depth of knowledge acquired
of each, varying by personal factors from one linguist to another.
      Language in all its forms and manifestations, that is all the languages of the
world and all the different uses to which in the various circumstances of mankind
they are put, constitutes the field of the linguist. He seeks a scientific understand-
ing of the place of language in human life, and of the ways in which it is organized
to fulfil the needs it serves and the functions it performs. Several of the subjects
he has within his purview and several of the questions to which he seeks answers
correspond to long-established divisions of the study of foreign languages and of
the institutionalized study of one’s own language.
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                              The Indo-European Family
      The languages thus brought into relationship by descent or progressive differ-
entiation from a parent speech are conveniently called a family of languages. Various
names have been used to designate this family. In books written a century ago the
term Aryan was commonly employed. It has now been generally abandoned and
when found today is used in a more restricted sense to designate the languages of
the family located in India and the plateau of Iran. A more common term is Indo-
Germanic, which is the most usual designation among German philologists, but it is
open to the objection of giving undue emphasis to the Germanic languages. The
term now most widely employed is Indo-European, suggesting more clearly the geo-
graphical extent of the family. The parent tongue from which the Indo-European lan-
guages have sprung had already become divided and scattered before the dawn of
history. When we meet with the various peoples by whom these languages are spo-
ken they have lost all knowledge of their former association. Consequently we have
no written record of the common Indo-European language. By a comparison of its
descendants, however, it is possible to form a fair idea of it and to make plausible
reconstructions of its lexicon and inflections.
      The surviving languages show various degrees of similarity to one another,
the similarity bearing a more or less direct relationship to their geographical distri-
bution. They accordingly fall into eleven principal groups: Indian, Iranian, Arme-
nian, Hellenic, Albanian, Italic, Balto-Slavic, Germanic, Celtic, Hittite, and Tochar-
ian. These are the branches of the Indo-European family tree.
      Indian – индийский; Iranian – иранский; Armenian – армянский; Hellenic –
греческий; Albanian – албанский; Italic – италийский, романский; Balto-Slavic
– балто-славянский; Germanic – германский; Celtic – кельтский; Hittite – хетт-
ский; Tocharian – тохарский.