typological linguistics

A branch of LINGUISTICS which studies the STRUCTURAL similarities between LANGUAGES, regardless of their history, as part of an attempt to establish a satisfactory CLASSIFICATION, or typology, of languages. Typological comparison is thus distinguished from the historical comparison of languages – the province of COMPARATIVE PHILOLOGY and HISTORICAL LINGUISTICS – and its groupings may not coincide with those set up by the historical method. For example, in respect of the paucity of INFLECTIONAL endings, English is closer to Chinese than it is to Latin. One typological classification, proposed by the German linguist Wilhelm von Humboldt (1768–1835) in the early nineteenth century, established three main groups of languages on structural grounds: ISOLATING, AGGLUTINATIVE and FUSIONAL; a fourth category, POLYSYNTHETIC, has sometimes been suggested. The MORPHOLOGICAL orientation of this approach is, however, only one aspect of typological analysis, which can operate at all linguistic levels (e.g. a PHONOLOGICAL typology in terms of CONSONANT/VOWEL inventories or SYSTEMS, SYLLABLE structure, or SUPRASEGMENTAL patterns – as illustrated in such notions as ‘TONE language’ or ‘CLICK language’). When one considers the many possible criteria of typological comparison, it is plain that no simple classification is likely to emerge, and that differences between languages are not clear-cut, but matters of degree.