Linguistic typology
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Linguistic typology is a subfield of linguistics
that studies and classifies languages according to their
structural features. Its aim is to describe and explain
the structural diversity of the world's languages. It includes
three subdisciplines: qualitative typology, which deals
with the issue of comparing languages and within-language
variance, quantitative typology, which deals with the distribution
of structural patterns in the world’s languages, and theoretical
typology, which explains these distributions.
Qualitative typology
Qualitative typology develops cross-linguistically viable
notions or types which provide a framework for the description
and comparison of individual languages. In psycholinguistics,
application of this study comes under the heading of syntax.
A few examples are given below.
Typological systems
Subject-Verb-Object positioning
One set of types is determined by the basic order of subject,
verb,
and direct
object in sentences:
These are usually abbreviated SVO and so forth, and may
be called "typologies" of the languages to which they apply.
Some languages split verbs into an auxiliary and an infinitive
or participle, and put the subject and/or object between
them. For instance, German ("Im Wald habe ich einen
Fuchs gesehen" - *"In-the woods have I a fox seen"),
Dutch ("Hans vermoedde dat Jan Piet Marie zag
leren zwemmen" - *"Hans suspected that Jan Piet Marie
saw teach swim") and Welsh ("Mae'r gwirio sillafu
wedi'i gwblhau" - *"Is the checking spelling after
its to complete"). In this case, typology is based on the
non-analytic tenses (i.e. those sentences in which the verb
is not split) or the position of the auxiliary. German is
thus SVO/VSO (without "im Wald" the agent would go first)
in main clauses and Welsh is VAP (and P would go after the
infinitive).
Both German and Dutch are often classified as V2
languages, as the verb invariantly occurs as the second
element of a full clause.
Some languages allow varying degrees of freedom in their
constituent order that pose a problem for their classification.
To define a basic constituent order type in this case, one
generally looks at frequency of different types in declarative
affirmative main clauses in pragmatically neutral contexts,
preferably with only old referents. Thus, for instance,
Russian is widely considered an SVO language, as this is
the most frequent constituent order under such conditions—all
sorts of variations are possible, though, and occur in texts.
In many inflected languages such as Russian, Latin, and
Greek, departures from the default word orders are permissible,
but usually imply a shift in focus, an emphasis on the final
element, or some special context. In the poetry of these
languages, the word order may also be freely shifted to
meet metrical demands. Additionally, freedom of word order
may vary within the same language—for example, formal, literary,
or archaizing varieties may have different, stricter, or
more lenient constituent-order strictures than an informal
spoken variety of the same language.
On the other hand, when there is no clear preference under
the described conditions, the language is considered to
have "flexible constituent order" (a type unto itself).
An additional problem is that in languages without living
speech communities, such as Latin, Hellenic Greek, and Old
Church Slavonic, linguists have only written evidence, perhaps
written in a poetic, formalizing, or archaic style that
mischaracterizes the actual daily use of the language. The
daily spoken language of a Sophocles or a Cicero might have
exhibited much different or much more regular syntax than
their written legacy indicates.
Morphosyntactic alignment
Another common classification is according to whether a
language is nominative-accusative
or ergative-absolutive.
In a language with cases,
the classification depends on whether the subject of an
intransitive verb has the same case as the agent or the
patient of a transitive verb. If a language has no cases,
but the word order AVP or PVA, then a classification may
be based on whether the subject of an intransitive verb
appears on the same side as the agent or the patient of
the transitive verb.
Many languages show mixed accusative and ergative behaviour
(e.g. ergative morphology marking the verb arguments, on
top of an accusative syntax). Other languages (called "active
languages") have two types of intransitive verbs—some
of them ("active verbs") join the subject in the same case
as the agent of a transitive verb, and the rest ("stative
verbs") join the subject in the same case as the patient.
Yet other languages behave ergatively only in some contexts
(this is called split
ergativity, and is usually based on the grammatical
person of the arguments or in the tense/aspect of the verb).
For example, only some verbs in Georgian
behave this way, and, as a rule, only while the tense called
aorist
is used.
Quantitative typology
Quantitative typology deals with the distribution and co-occurrence
of structural patterns in the languages of the world. Two
major types of non-chance distribution are preferences (for
instance, absolute and implicational universals,
semantic maps, hierarchies)
and correlations (areal patterns, for instance, Sprachbund).
Bibliography
- Comrie, B. (1989). Language universals and linguistic
typology: Syntax and morphology. Oxford: Blackwell, 2nd
edn. ISBN
0226114333.
- Croft, W. (2002). Typology and universals. Cambridge:
Cambridge UP. 2nd ed. ISBN
0521004993.
- Cysouw, M. (2005). Quantitative
methods in typology. Quantitative linguistics: an
international handbook, ed. by Gabriel Altmann, Reinhard
Köhler and R. Piotrowski. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
ISBN
3110155788.
- Nichols, J. (1992). Linguistic
diversity in space and time. Chicago: University of
Chicago Press. ISBN
0226580571.
- Song, J.J. (2001). Linguistic typology: Morphology and
syntax. Harlow and London: Pearson Education (Longman).
ISBN
0582312205.
- Song, J.J. (ed.) (forthcoming). The Oxford Handbook
of Linguistic Typology. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
- Whaley, L.J. (1997). Introduction to typology: The unity
and diversity of language. Newbury Park: Sage. ISBN
080395963X.
External links
Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linguistic_typology
Published - December 2008
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