12. The subject of contrastive typology and its notions. Kinds and methods of topological investigation.

Typology is a branch of linguistics. It aims at establishing similar general linguistic categories serving as a basis for the classification of languages of different types, irrespective of their genealogical relationship. CT represents a linguistic subject of typology based on the method of comparison or contrasting. CT as a branch of linguistics employs some terms and notions of its own:1) Absolute universals-features of a language level pertaining to any language of the world(vowels and consonants,word stress,parts of speech); 2)Near universal- features common in many or some languages under typological investigation; 3)Metalanguage – is the language in which the actual presentation/analysis of different features of the contrasted features languages is carried out; 4)Typologically dominant features are features dominating at a language level or in the structure of one/some of the contrasted languages; 5)Typologically recessive features are those losing their former dominant role as, for instance, case forms in English or the dual number forms of some nouns in present – day Ukrainian; 6)Isomorphic features are common features in languages under Contrastive analysis.(categories of number, person, tense); 7)Allomorphic features are observed in one language and missing in the other (gerund or the diphthongs are missing in Ukrainian); 8)The etalon language is a hypothetic language created by typologists for the sake of contrasting any languages.

CT investigations are carried out with the help of several methods. They are comparative method, deductive and inductive, the statistic, the immediate constituents, the transformational and the substitutional. The main one is the comparative method which is also employed in historical and comparative linguistic. The deductive method is based on logical calculation which suggests all admissive variants of realization of a certain feature in speech of one or of some contrasted languages. The statistic method is employed in CT for establishing the necessary quantitative and qualitative representation of some features or languages data, for identifying the percentage of co-occurrence of some features or language units in speech of the contrasted languages. The immediate constituents method is employed to contrast only language units with the aim of establishing their constituent parts in one or some contrasted languages.

Kinds of typological investigation:1)Universal typology investigates all languages of the world to singling out in them features which are common in all languages;2) Special typology investigates concrete languages, one of which is, as a rule, the native tongue; 3)General typology investigates the most general phonetic, morphological, lexical, syntactic or stylistic features;4) Partial typology investigates a restricted number of language features: for eg. the system of vowels/consonants;5) Areal typology investigates common and divergent features in languages of a particular geographical area with respect to their mutual influence of one language upon the other;6) Structural typology investigates the means of grammatical expression, the order of constituent parts at the level of words, word-combinations and sentences;7) Functional typology investigates the frequency of language units in speech; 8) Content typology investigates the types of possible meanings expressed by various language units and their forms in the contrasted languages;9)Semasiological typology investigates the ways of expressing meaning of language units in the contrasted languages;10)Onomasiological typology investigates isomorphic and allomorphic ways of giving family names and nicknames to people in different contrasted languages; 11)Quantitative typology investigates the correlation of some features and their dominant role in the contrasted languages.