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Information about Linguistic Typology

For the subfield of linguistics, see .
Linguistic Typology
DisciplineLinguistic typology
LanguageEnglish
Edited byFrans Plank
Publication details
PublisherMouton de Gruyter (Germany)
Publication history1997 - present
FrequencyThree times a year
Indexing
ISSN1430-0532 (print)
1613-415X (web)
Links
*Journal homepage*Mouton de Gruyter*Atypon Link


Linguistic Typology is an international peer-reviewed journal in the field of linguistic typology, founded in 1997. It is published by Mouton de Gruyter on behalf of the Association for Linguistic Typology. Its editor-in-chief is Prof. Frans Plank (University of Konstanz). The journal is accessible online with subscription via the site of the publisher and Atypon Link.

For the journal, see .
Linguistic typology
Morphological
Analytic
Synthetic
Fusional
Agglutinative
Polysynthetic
Oligosynthetic
Morphosyntactic
Alignment
Accusative
Ergative
Philippine
Active-stative
Tripartite
Inverse marking
Syntactic pivot
Theta role
Word Order
VO languages
Subject Verb Object
Verb Subject Object
Verb Object Subject
OV languages
Subject Object Verb
Object Subject Verb
Object Verb Subject
Time Manner Place
Place Manner Time
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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 deals with the issue of comparing languages and within-language variance, Quantitative typology deals with the distribution of structural patterns in the world’s languages, and Theoretical typology 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. 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 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 a relatively free constituent order that poses a problem for their classification. To define the basic constituent order type in this case one has to look at frequency of different types in declarative affirmative main clauses in pragmatically neutral contexts, preferably with only old referents. Thus, for instance, Russian is an SVO language, as this is the most frequent constituent order under these conditions, though all sorts of variations are possible 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.

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

Main article: 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.
  • Croft, W. (1990). Typology and universals. Cambridge: Cambridge UP.
  • 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.
  • Nichols, J. (1992). Linguistic diversity in space and time. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
  • Song, J.J. (2001). Linguistic typology: Morphology and syntax. Harlow and London: Pearson Education (Longman).
  • 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.

External links

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Agriculture and forestry

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English}}} 
Writing system: Latin (English variant) 
Official status
Official language of: 53 countries
Regulated by: no official regulation
Language codes
ISO 639-1: en
ISO 639-2: eng
ISO 639-3: eng  
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Walter de Gruyter is a scholarly publishing house specializing in German language academic literature. For over 250 years Walter de Gruyter has published scholarly books in philosophy, theology, literature, natural science, linguistics, and mathematics.
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Anthem
"Das Lied der Deutschen" (third stanza)
also called "Einigkeit und Recht und Freiheit"
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Year 1997 (MCMXCVII
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An ISSN, or International Standard Serial Number, is a unique eight-digit number used to identify a print or electronic periodical publication. The ISSN system was adopted as international standard ISO 3297 in 1975. The TC 46/SC 9 is responsible for the standard.
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Peer review (known as refereeing in some academic fields) is a process of subjecting an author's scholarly work, research or ideas to the scrutiny of others who are experts in the same field.
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Walter de Gruyter is a scholarly publishing house specializing in German language academic literature. For over 250 years Walter de Gruyter has published scholarly books in philosophy, theology, literature, natural science, linguistics, and mathematics.
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University of Konstanz (German: Universität Konstanz) is a university in the city of Konstanz in Baden-Württemberg, Germany. It was founded in 1966, and the main campus on the Gießberg was opened in 1972.
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Morphological typology is a way of classifying the languages of the world (see linguistic typology) that groups languages according to their common morphological structures.
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This article or section may be confusing or unclear for some readers.
Please [improve the article] or discuss this issue on the talk page. This article has been tagged since April 2007.
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A synthetic language, in linguistic typology, is a language with a high morpheme-per-word ratio. This linguistic classification is largely independent of morpheme-usage classifications (such as fusional, agglutinative, etc.
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fusional language (also called inflecting language) is a type of synthetic language, distinguished from agglutinative languages by its tendency to "squish together" many morphemes in a way which can be difficult to segment.
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An agglutinative language is a language that uses agglutination extensively: most words are formed by joining morphemes together. This term was introduced by Wilhelm von Humboldt in 1836 to classify languages from a morphological point of view.
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Polysynthetic languages are highly synthetic languages, i.e. languages in which words are composed of many morphemes.

Definition

The degree of synthesis refers to the morpheme-to-word ratio. Languages with more than one morpheme per word are synthetic.
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An oligosynthetic language (from the Greek ὀλίγος, meaning "few" or "little") is any language using very few morphemes, perhaps only a few hundred, which combine synthetically to form statements.
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In linguistics, morphosyntactic alignment is the system used to distinguish between the arguments of transitive verbs and those of intransitive verbs. The distinction can be made morphologically (through grammatical case or verbal agreement), syntactically (through word
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A nominative-accusative language (or simply accusative language) is one that marks the direct object of transitive verbs distinguishing them from the subject of both transitive and intransitive verbs.
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An ergative-absolutive language (or simply ergative) is one that treats the agent of transitive verbs distinctly from the subject of intransitive verbs and the object of transitive verbs.

Ergative vs.


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Austronesian alignment, commonly known as the Philippine- or Austronesian-type voice system, is a typologically unusual morphosyntactic alignment that combines features of ergative and accusative languages.
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An active-stative language, or active language for short, is one in which the sole argument of an intransitive verb is sometimes marked in the same way as the agent of a transitive verb (that is, like a subject in English), and sometimes in the same way as the direct object
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A tripartite language, also called an ergative-accusative language, is one that treats the subject of an intransitive verb, the subject of a transitive verb, and the object of a transitive verb each in different ways.
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A direct-inverse language is a language where clauses with transitive verbs can be expressed either using a direct or an inverse construction. The direct construction is used when the subject of the transitive clause outranks the object in saliency or animacy but the
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The syntactic pivot is the verb argument around which sentences "revolve", in a given language. This usually means the following:
  • If the verb has more than zero arguments, then one argument is the syntactic pivot.

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theta role or θ-role is the formal device for representing syntactic argument structure (the number and type of noun phrases) required syntactically by a particular verb. For example, the verb put requires three arguments (i.e., it is ditransitive).
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In linguistic typology, word order is the order in which words appear in sentences. In many languages, changes in word order occur due to topicalization or in questions.
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In linguistics, a VO language is a language in which the verb typically comes before the object (thus including SVO, VOS and VSO languages). It was W.P. Lehmann who first proposed to reduce the six possible permutations of word order to just two main ones, VO and OV, in
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In linguistic typology, subject-verb-object (SVO), is a sentence structure where the subject comes first, the verb second, and the object third. Languages may be classified according to the dominant sequence of these elements.
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Verb Subject Object (VSO) is a term in linguistic typology. It represents one type of languages when classifying languages according to the sequence of these constituents in neutral expressions: Ate Sam oranges.
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In linguistic typology, Verb Object Subject or Verb Object Agent - commonly used in its abbreviated form VOS or VOA - represents the language-classification type in which the following sequence of the three constituents, in neutral expressions, is
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