Standard Average European
Under Standard Average European (to German: standard average European , and SAE languages called) refers to a European Sprachbund , that a group of European languages which are similar in a number of language structure characteristics, although they are not necessarily related, that is, from the the same original language . These are among others:
- the distinction between indefinite and definite article (e.g. German an / an: der / die / das ) (Exceptions among European languages: only certain articles know Icelandic , Irish , Welsh , Bulgarian and Maltese , know no articles at all the Slavic languages besides Bulgarian, the languages of the Baltic states and Finnish )
- the formation of relative clauses that come after the noun in question and are introduced with a changeable relative pronoun (e.g. German der / die / das / das / haben / haben / dass , English who, whose, whom ) (sometimes there are also constructions with unalterable relative pronoun possible) (exceptions among the European languages: the Celtic languages , Basque and Maltese )
- a construction with to have or to be as a possibility of forming the past (e.g. German I said ) (exceptions among the European languages: the Celtic languages with the exception of Breton , the Slavic languages, the Baltic languages , Hungarian and Maltese )
- a passive construction in which the object of the action becomes the subject of the sentence and the past participle is combined with an auxiliary verb (e.g. German, the wine is drunk ) (exceptions among the European languages: Welsh, Finnish and Estonian )
The emergence of these commonalities is associated with the migration of peoples , which stands at the beginning of the European cultural area (see also the explanations under Eurolinguistics ). The SAE languages are therefore also called the Charlemagne Sprachbund ( Charlemagne = English / French for Charlemagne ).
literature
- Joachim Grzega : Look at the structure of our languages: Be prepared for phonetic and grammatical differences. In: Grzega, Joachim, EuroLinguistic Parcours: Core Knowledge of European Language Culture , Frankfurt: IKO, 2006, pp. 169–192. ISBN 3-88939-796-4 .
- Martin Haspelmath : The European Linguistic Area: Standard Average European. In: Martin Haspelmath et al. (Ed.): Language Typology and Language Universals , vol. 1, pp. 1492–1510, Berlin: de Gruyter 2001.
- Bernd Heine , Tania Kuteva: The Changing Languages of Europe , New York / Oxford: Oxford University Press 2006.
- Benjamin Lee Whorf : Language, Thought, Reality. Contributions to metalinguistics and the philosophy of language. Rowohlt, Reinbek 1963.
Web links
Wiktionary: Standard Average European - explanations of meanings, word origins, synonyms, translations
