Lecture 3. The structural essence of typological investigations.

The content of the lecture: This lecture presents a short review of typological investigations in order to explain the most essential structural features in different languages. In this chapter are presented valid linguistic data which support the conclusions of linguistic typology that languages of different peoples may get united not only on the genealogical or areal but also on the structural basis and by this making the process of perception new languages easier and more productive.

Key words: structural type, language type, synthetic languages; asymmetry; analytical languages; type of a language, type in a language, agglutinative type; inflectional (inflective) type; isolating type; polysynthetic; introflective type; common/individual features; typological comparisons; agreement /adjoining; typological significance.

Objectives and tasks of the lecture:

After completing your work over the material of a lecture you should be able to discuss the essence of the following problems:

1. The steps in typological studies;

2. Wilhelm fon Humboldt and his classification;

3. Edward Sapir and his classification;

4. Language types by the vision of V. Skalitchka

5. Language type: the two structural versions of manifestation;

6. The main features of analytical languages;

7. The main features of synthetic languages;

8. The main features of polysynthetic languages;

9. Different typological techniques in each type of a language. Examples;

Recommendations for the students: When working over the material presented below, it is advisable to keep in mind that common structural features may be characteristic not only for kindred languages but for those of a different genetic origin. It is to remember that structurally the languages of any genealogical family may manifest either synthetic or analytical tendency in their functioning.

The material for lecture3:

§1.Most promising perspective in contrastive investigation of languages is that section of comparative linguistics known as linguistic typology, the founder of which was Wilhelm fon Gumboldt (1767-1835). The result of his activity in this direction took shape in a morphological classification of languages according to which there had been distinguished four classes of languages–isolating as Chinese , i.e. lacking formal morphemes; agglutinative as Turkic languages, joining the monosemantic morphemes in juxtaposition; flective or inflective languages , belonging to Indo-European and Semitic families, in which several lexico-grammatical relationships are usually rendered by a polysemantic morpheme. One more, a forth group of languages, named by W. fon Humboldt as incorporative, is presented by the languages of American Indians and the peoples inhabiting the territories of Northern Eurasian and Northern American belt.

The position concerning the structural classification of languages as well as the very terminological definitions had been readily accepted in linguistic circles and further successfully developed. Though the attempt to refer to the peoples as those with a low level of culture only because of a different structural organization of their languages appeared mistaken and was later rejected. To Humboldt, for example, flective (Indo-European and Semitic ) languages seemed to be ‘more correct’, because the unity of a word in these languages is provided by outer and inner inflection, so, in the process of language making they occupy the highest position. However, the attempts to group languages on a basis of a morphological structure of a word determined the following direction in typological studies and in a science of linguistic typology took a shape of ‘morphological classification’.

§2.In the XXth century arose the tendency to put into the basis of typological description the system of crisscrossing features, which, in its turn resulted in several approaches in typological studies.

 2.1. American linguist E.Sapir (1884-1939), the author of the new typological classification, in establishing structural types suggested the three criteria as to the technique of juxtaposition and distinguishes the following types of languages:

a/Isolating type, with no formal elements in their original form;

b/Agglutinating(agglutinative)type, with no change in a root(stem);

c/The type on the principle of fusion, when root and morpheme get fused so strongly that the morphemic joint gets hardly distinguishable;

c/ Symbolic type when the inner change takes place by means of a shift in vowels, consonants, stress and intonation.

Into account is taken the degree of synthesizing lexical or grammatical meanings in one word. To Sapir in analytical languages we can see no cases of combining because in such language types a separate word is unable to adjoin meaningful morphemes. This type is well illustrated by English and French. In synthetic types the words take on affixes what makes them more flexible in forming new meanings. In polysynthetic type of a language (a third type suggested by Sapir) a degree of synthesizing is more highly expressed. Thus the author distinguishes three types of languages: analytical, synthetic and polysynthetic, in which the processes of isolation, agglutination, fusion and symbolization are accordingly realized.

2.2. V. Skalitchka, representative of the Prague Linguistic Circle, pointed out the main features of language types irrespective of any concrete language and suggested the list of these features though not full:

A – agglutinative type; B –inflectional (flective); C – isolating type; D – polysynthetic; E – introflective type.