1 republic of uzbekistan ministry of higher and secondary specialised education

 
 

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2. MAIN PERIODS AND FACTORS OF DEVELOPMENT AND 
THE MAIN PARAMETERS MODIFYING SUBJECT MATTER 
AND BRANCHES OF THE LINGUISTIC TYPOLOGY 
 
Plan: 
1.General characteristics of historic development of linguistic 
typology 
2.Four periods and their peculiarities 
3.Influence of different factors in historic development of linguistic 
typology 
4.Six factors and their peculiarities 
5.Main parameters modifying the subject matter and branches of 
linguistic typology 
 
Basic concepts of the subject: 
Main parameters, factors and their peculiarities, accepted criteria, 
evolutional, grammatical categories, interlanguage contacts, system 
closeness, genetic closeness, areal limitation, phono-morphological 
means, lexical means, syntactic means 
 
Being an independent science linguistic typology has its own 
periods of development. It's one of the unsolved and disputable 
problems of modern linguistics, because defining the periods of 
development of linguistic typology is closely connected with the history 
of general linguistics and especially with the development of mental 
ability of mankind. Therefore, in Modem linguistics there are no 
accepted criteria, which may be taken as a basis for this classification. 
There exist different variants of periodization of linguistic typology 
suggested by different linguists such as professor Olkhovikov B. A. and 
others. But professor J. Buranov gives the most suitable classification. 
He suggests the following four periods: 
The first period is characterized as an evolutional. It starts with the 
emerging of the primary linguistic works. This period lasted up to the 
Renaissance Epoch. Among this period we can name the Greek
philosophers like Aristotle, Protogor and others who distinguished the 
primary grammatical categories and Stoic - secondary grammatical 

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categories. All grammar books of this period were based on the 
principles of analogy. 
The second period is characterized as a period of the definition of 
the language comparison. The following fundamental works are 
specific for this period: In indo-European languages - Port-Royal 
Grammar, in Turkic languages -"Devon Lugat-at-Turk" written by M. 
Kashgari. 
Port-Royal Grammar appeared in the 17th century in France. The 
main point of this grammar is that the language structure is treated as a 
system. M. Kashgari tried to analyze a set of Turkic languages from the 
point of view of their structure and determined degrees of their 
relationship. 
The third period of the history of development of linguistic 
philology is related with the appearance of the comparative historical 
linguistics and the appearance of genealogical and typological 
classification of languages. 
The fourth period is connected with the scientific linguistic 
typology as an independent discipline. This period coincides with the 
20
th
century, characterized by the division of linguistic typology into 
different concrete branches, such as the structural, genetic, areal, 
comparative and so on. 
The science about comparison of language systems is developed 
under the influence of some factors, which played a great role in it. 
There are 6 factors. 
The first factor is named typological imitation. It means using 
certain methods and models of one language while studying the system 
of another language. It is the most ancient type of language description. 
For example, first Latin grammars were written on the basis of Greek 
grammars. Later on many grammar books of different languages were 
written under the influence of this method. For example, Samuel 
Johnson (1755) who wrote the English grammar, distinguished 6 cases 
in English under the influence of the Latin grammar. They are 
Nominative, Genitive, Dative, Accusative, Vocative and Ablative. 
The second factor is the appearance of scientific works in 
comparison, which played a great role in further language descriptions. 
Substantial comparison of language systems began in early 
antiquity. The most systemic comparison of different languages began 
by Antuan Arnauld and Klod Lanselot in Port-Royal Grammar where 

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the authors studied French, Latin, and Greek languages under 
comparison. 
Here it should be kept in mind the role of scientific-historical 
method, which influenced the development of linguistic comparison. It 
is connected with the appearance of scientific comparison, which had 
its own peculiar methods of comparison of language systems. 
The third factor is connected with the process of studying unwritten 
and less known languages. 
Investigation of these kinds of languages, definition of their 
relationship with other languages and comparison of the systems of 
these languages with the systems of Indo-European languages gave a 
certain stimulus to the development of linguistic typology. 
The fourth factor is the influence of translation. Translation is one 
of the ancient sciences of linguistics, which has its own history. While 
translating from one language into another the linguist comes across 
with certain process of comparison of language systems. That's why 
some scholars, for example, Roger Ellis (2008), considers translation as 
one of the constituent part of linguistic typology. 
The fifth factor is the influence of lexicography. While preparing 
different kinds of dictionaries scholars at the same time compare the 
systems of two or more related and non-related languages. 
As usual dictionaries are compiled without paying attention to the 
genetic relationship of studying languages. That's why in the process of 
their work lexicographers distinguish phonetic, grammatical and lexical 
peculiarities of source language in order to interpret it in comparing 
languages. 
The sixth factor is the practical and scientific study of foreign 
languages and interlanguage contacts. 
While studying foreign languages and teaching them there 
appeared the necessity in comparing the systems of studying languages. 
Linguistic typology as an independent branch of general linguistics 
helps to study all kinds of languages in comparison. 
On the basis of analysis of works written by Russian and foreign 
typologists such as Greenberg J.H., Bondarko A.V. and others the 
following parameters modifying the subject matter and branches of 
linguistic typology were suggested: 
1.
System closeness 
2.
Genetic closeness 

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3.
Areal limitation of compared languages 
4.
Quantitative limitation 
5.
Deep and surface identity and non-identity 
6.
Identity of etic and emic units 
7.
Limitation of etalon language 
8.
Formal approach to comparison 
9.
Content approach to comparison 
10.
One-level approach to comparison 
11.
Cross-level approach to comparison 
12.
Perfectness of typological operations 
System closeness means the identity or non-identity of structural 
types of compared languages. There are two terms in linguistics: type 
of language, type in language. Type of language is used much broader 
in linguistics than type in language. Every language has its own 
systemic structural organization. The system of the language consists 
of elements. According to the relations of their elements languages are 
classified into 5 types: 
✓
Agglutinated 
✓
Inflected 
✓
Isolated 
✓
Polysynthetic 
✓
Agglutinated-inflected 
The term "type of language" is used mostly within one language. 
Genetic closeness means material identity of the group of 
compared languages. For genetic closeness structural and etic-emic 
identity is characteristic. 
There distinguished a) genetically closely related languages such 
as Uzbek and Kyrgyz and b) genetically differently related languages 
such as Uzbek and Russian. 
Areal limitation of the group of compared languages presupposes 
that comparison is limited by the group of languages belonging to a 
certain geographic area. 
Quantitative limitation of compared languages may be of the 
following types: a) minimal limitation. It means that the list of 
compared languages is open. This type is used in investigating language 
universals; b) maximal limitation. It means that only two languages may 
be compared. This type is used in comparative typology; c) genetic 

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limitation is used in genetic typology and it means that only neighbour 
languages may be compared; d) limitation of certain universals. 
Deep and surface identity. Under deep and surface identity we 
understand some generalized meaning, which is peculiar to the group 
of compared languages and has different representation on surface. For 
example, the meaning of gender or biological sex characterizes all 
languages of the world. That's why it is the deep structure for 
comparison. Its surface structure is different. In Russian there exists a 
special grammatical category of gender (ex: стол-mask., парта-femin., 
окно-neuter), in the English and Uzbek languages there is no 
grammatical category of gender, but its meaning can be expressed on 
the other levels of the language: on the lexical and lexical-syntactical 
levels of the language. 
Etic-emic identity is the coincidence of more concrete units of 
compared languages on etic-emic sublevels, for example, on etic level 
we observe different variants of suffixes of plurality in Turkic 
languages. 
Limitation of etalon language. Etalon language is an instrument 
with the help of which we compare different languages.