ABSTRACT
In Europe (or more broadly speaking, in Eurasia) the standard manner of classifying Einzelsprachen is the “genealogical language tree” (Stammbaum). Other less popular schemes frequently employed by linguists include the classificatory concepts of dialect continuum and linguistic area (Sprachbund). All are context specific, and none is universal, meaning that these classificatory approaches and systems were developed first in Europe for sorting Einzelsprachen, that is, languages constructed in line with the Judeo-Graeco-Romano-Christian-Islamic concept of Einzelsprache. This concept of a language (Einzelsprache) assumes that the speech of a country’s ruling elite, usually residing in the capital, should be the (dialectal and sociolectal) basis for a planned (intended) Einzelsprache, which in practice is created by applying to it the technology of writing. Empires and modern states are possible thanks to widespread bureaucracy, which typically is conducted with the employment of a single official (national) language. In order to ensure that the bureaucratic system covers relevant issues in a similar and comparable manner across the entire territory of a polity, administrators and scribes need to stick to the same usages in order to avoid confusion, so that a document produced hundreds of kilometers away would be comprehensible to bureaucrats at the other end of this state. The main instruments of creating such uniformity of language use are a writing system with an orthographic norm, an authoritative grammar, and a state-approved dictionary. The adoption of a single writing system and standard methods of coding sounds (phonemes), syllables and words (morphemes) limits the initial spelling variety in this regard, which previously often made a text appear gibberish to a reader with no knowledge of a specific local orthographic system. The authoritative grammar ensures uniformity at the level of syntax (sentences), while the approved dictionary limits or expands the vocabulary, as suitable, and curbs semantic ambiguity by linking specific meanings to specific words and by cutting out redundant alternatives. This is, in essence, the process of standardizing and creating languages in line with the Western concept of Einzelsprache, as developed some two millennia ago in the Roman Empire. This is not a universal process or method of shaping languages, though many believe so due to the fact that in the course of the Western colonization of, and extending domination over the world, this model of linguistic engineering was imposed on the entire globe and is accepted as the norm to this day.
