Concept
Linguistic typology
Overview
Linguistic typology (or language typology) is a field of linguistics that studies and classifies languages according to their structural features to allow their comparison. Its aim is to describe and explain the structural diversity and the common properties of the world's languages. Its subdisciplines include, but are not limited to: phonological typology, which deals with sound features; syntactic typology, which deals with word order and form; lexical typology, which deals with language vocabulary; and theoretical typology, which aims to explain the universal tendencies.
Linguistic typology is contrasted with genealogical linguistics on the grounds that typology groups languages or their grammatical features based on formal similarities rather than historic descendence. The issue of genealogical relation is however relevant to typology because modern data sets aim to be representative and unbiased. Samples are collected evenly from different language families and emphasize the importance of lesser-known languages in gaining insight into human language.
Overview adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0; see the article history for authors).
Possible passages
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In this stage it is a resultant from previous separate association and apperception processes. Then follows in the second stage of expression in speech, an analysis of that total idea into its parts, in which these parts are always put into close relations with each other. Such relations are called by grammarians subject and predicate, noun and adjective, verb and adverb, &c. The grammatical meaning of these…
Wilhelm Max Wundt, An Introduction to Psychology Translated from the Second German Edition
States what Linguistic typology is.
This process of composition is sometimes found in its incipient stage—a stage in which the component words are temporarily united to signify some unnamed object, and do not (from lack of frequent use) permanently cohere. But in the majority of inferior languages, the process of “agglutination,” as it is called, has gone far enough to produce considerable stability in the compound words: there is a manifest…
Herbert Spencer, First Principles
States what Linguistic typology is.
In the Latin word _fero, fer_, meaning 'to bear,' is the root from which all modifications of the verb _ferre_ (to carry) are formed by means of suffixal elements. If, therefore, a language consists of sound complexes having the nature of roots, it is called a root-language. As a matter of fact, however, the languages under discussion consist purely of detached, monosyllabic _words_; the conception 'root,' which…
Wilhelm Max Wundt, Elements of Folk Psychology Outline of a Psychological History of the Development of Mankind
States what Linguistic typology is.
Related ideas
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- Cognition
- German language
- Greek language
- Ancient Greek
- Plural
- Japanese language
- Psycholinguistics
- Language isolate
- Latin
- August Wilhelm Schlegel
- Language family
- Latin alphabet
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- Louis Hjelmslev
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- Antoine Arnauld
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- Renaissance
- Roman Jakobson
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Place in the tradition
Part of Language.