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8 : Scientific Contents in Prākrta Canons
Now-a-days, the typological classification has lost its significance. The family classification has replaced it. A family of language is based upon — (a) linguistic similarity in words, sounds, syntax, sense and forms and (b) regional proximity. On this basis, languages of the world have been grouped under a number of families varying from one to one hundred, suggesting a difficulty in systematic grouping. However, most Indian scholars are agreed on Von Humboldt ( 1822 ) classification of languages in thirteen families : (a) Africa Zone
(i) Sematic-hematic ( Inflectional ) (ii) Vantu ( Aggl.) (iii) Sudanese ( Analytic )
(iv) Bushman (b ) Euresia Zone
(v) Malay-polynesian ( Aggl. ) (vi) Ural-Altaic (Aggl. ) (vii) Chinese (Analytic) (viii) Dravidian (Aggl.) (ix) Austro-Asiatic ( Aggl.) (x) Indo-European ( Inflectional ) (xi) Caucacian (Aggl.)
(xii) Japanese-Korean ( Aggl. ) (c) American Zone
( xiii ) Red Indian and others (d) Pacific Zone ( Polynesian )
Sematic-hematic
The world has also been linguistically divided under four zones as above where these language families are found. It is observed that the Euresia zone is most important one where some nine families are found. Some families are found even in more than one zone. The various language families are shown in Table 1.
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