Linguistic Typology
Chapter 4: Linguistic Typology
Chapter 4
Linguistic typology
4.1 Introduction
Simply speaking, the study of universals is concerned with what human languages have in common, while the study of typology deals with ways in which languages differ from each other. This contrast, however, is not sharp. When languages differ from each other, the variation is not random, but subject to limitations. Linguistic typology is not only concerned with variation, but also with the limitations on the degree of variation found in the languages of the world. It is due to these limitations that languages may be meaningfully divided into various types. For instance, typologists often divide languages into types according to socalled basic word order, often understood as the order of subject (S), object (O) and verb (V) in a typical declarative sentence. The vast majority of the languages of the world fall into one of three groups: SOV (Japanese, Tamil, Turkish etc.) SVO (Fula, Chinese, English etc.) VSO (Arabic, Tongan, Welsh etc.) Logically speaking, there should be nothing wrong with the three other possibilities: VOS, OVS and OSV. As mentioned above, however, they are exceedingly rare and typically occur in areas that have been relatively isolated. The three main groups have one thing in common, that the subject precedes the object. It is a small step, therefore, from basic word order typology to the formulation of the statistical universal we became acquainted with in the previous chapter: Subjects tend strongly to precede objects. The study of typology and the study of universals, therefore, go hand in hand. In this chapter, we will have a look at morphological typology, word order typology, the typology of motion verbs, and the typological distinction between tone languages and stress languages. These are only a few examples of the large amount of phenomena that may be studied from a typological viewpoint. First, however, we shall discuss a little further what typology
Chapter 4
Linguistic typology
4.1 Introduction
Simply speaking, the study of universals is concerned with what human languages have in common, while the study of typology deals with ways in which languages differ from each other. This contrast, however, is not sharp. When languages differ from each other, the variation is not random, but subject to limitations. Linguistic typology is not only concerned with variation, but also with the limitations on the degree of variation found in the languages of the world. It is due to these limitations that languages may be meaningfully divided into various types. For instance, typologists often divide languages into types according to socalled basic word order, often understood as the order of subject (S), object (O) and verb (V) in a typical declarative sentence. The vast majority of the languages of the world fall into one of three groups: SOV (Japanese, Tamil, Turkish etc.) SVO (Fula, Chinese, English etc.) VSO (Arabic, Tongan, Welsh etc.) Logically speaking, there should be nothing wrong with the three other possibilities: VOS, OVS and OSV. As mentioned above, however, they are exceedingly rare and typically occur in areas that have been relatively isolated. The three main groups have one thing in common, that the subject precedes the object. It is a small step, therefore, from basic word order typology to the formulation of the statistical universal we became acquainted with in the previous chapter: Subjects tend strongly to precede objects. The study of typology and the study of universals, therefore, go hand in hand. In this chapter, we will have a look at morphological typology, word order typology, the typology of motion verbs, and the typological distinction between tone languages and stress languages. These are only a few examples of the large amount of phenomena that may be studied from a typological viewpoint. First, however, we shall discuss a little further what typology