Lecture comparative typology as a branch of linguistic typology

LECTURE 1. COMPARATIVE TYPOLOGY AS A BRANCH OF LINGUISTIC TYPOLOGY

Comparative typology is a field of linguistics that studies and classifies languages according to their structural and functional features. Its aim is to describe and explain the common properties and the structural diversity of the world's languages.

According to William Croft’s book “Typology and Universals”, the term ‘typology’ is roughly synonymous with ‘taxonomy’/’classification’ and given the following definition:





Typology represents an approach or theoretical framework to the study of language that contrasts with prior approaches

From anetymological point of view, the word typology consists of two Greek morphemes: a) typosmeans “type” and b) logos means “science”. Typology is a branch of science, which is typical to all sciences without any exception. In this respect, their typological method is not limited to the sphere of one science. It has a universal rise. Therefore, typology may be divided into:

Non-linguistic typology
Linguistic typology
Non-linguistic typology is the subject matter of the sciences except linguistics. It can be political typology, medical, historical, botanic, psychological, mathematical or economic typology as well. General and
solitary differences and similarities are typical to all sciences. Some branches isolate systemic comparison into an independent sub-branch within the frames of a more general science: e.g.
comparative psychology first mentioned in the works of Aristotle who described psychological similarities between animals and human beings. One the most well-known representatives of Comparative Psychologywas Charles Darwin.
Comparative Pedagogy deals with general and distinctive features, development trends and prospective of theory, applied instruction and upbringing methods, reveals their economic, social political and philosophic backgrounds.
Historical typology analyses historic facts and produces comparative inventory based on the history of each nation/ethnicity to reveal general trends, differences, and similarities. E.g. based on French revolution of 1848 the major signs of revolutionary situation were revealed.
Literary criticism ot rapid development in the second half of XIX century simultaneously with thedevelopment of comparative linguistics. In Russia, the representatives of comparative linguistics were P.M. Samarin,
V.M. Jirmunskiy, M.P. Alekseev, N.I. Conrad, I.G. Neupokoeva, etc.
The two sciences — ComparativeTypology and Literary criticism have a number of similarities:
linguistic comparison deals with identifying universal principles of thecomparative description of the systems of national languages. Literary criticism establishes general principles of typological description of national literature;
both sciences deal with identifying systemic features and discover typological isomorphism which can be conditioned structurally, genetically and geographically, etc.
Comparative typology is one of the branches of General Linguistics, which studies the systems of languages comparatively, also finds common laws of languages and establishes differences and similarities between them.Moreover, due to David Crystal’s book “Dictionary of Linguistics and Phonetics”, Comparative Typology is explained in this way: “A branch of linguistics which studies thestructural similarities between languages, regardlessof their history, as part of an attempt to establisha satisfactory classification or typology oflanguages. Typological comparison is thus distinguishedfrom the historical comparison oflanguages […] and its groupings may not coincidewith those set up by the historical method”.

LECTURE 2.

MAIN PERIODS AND FACTORS OF DEVELOPMENT OF TYPOLOGICAL
INVESTIGATIONS
The questions of timing the history of linguistic comparison are quite complicated and are the ones, which have not found their final solution yet. The history of linguistic comparison is an integral part of linguistic science development, which is bound with the history of thenation and cognition. That is why there are no generally accepted criteria for timing this problem yet. We will see Dr. Buranov’s viewpoint.
The first period is characterized as a spontaneous or evolutionary. It begins
with the emergence of the first linguistic works.
That period was over not long before the Renaissance.
The second period is characterized as a period of establishing the first scien- tific comparison of languages and this period is related to the General and Rational Grammar: Port-Royal Grammar by Arnauld A., Lancelot C, (XVII c.) in Indo-European languages. Port-Royal Grammar can be considered one of the most precious contributions to thedevelopment of Comparative Typology.
The third period is relatedto development of comparative historical linguistics,
genealogical and typological classification of languages, (mid- XIX c.)
The fourth period is related to establishing of Comparative Typology as a separate science with the bulk of General Linguistics. It coincides with the XX century.
The fourth factor is theinfluence of the translation and translation science. Translation is a quite ancient science. When people started to translate from one language into another they unconsciously compared two languages. That is why they consider translation to be the main part of typology. The influence of translation to typology can be classified as followings:
translation of fiction stories;
translation of grammatical forms;
translations that are done under the influence of mathematical linguistics.
The fifth factor is theinfluence of lexicography. The appearance of dictionaries was bound with applied need to transform and compare languages and national cultures. While compiling bi- or multilingual dictionaries a lexicographer conducts acomparison of all levels of language hierarchy: phonetic units, grammatical structure, lexical units, word formation, punctuation, etc.
The sixth factor ispractical and theoretical study and teaching of foreign languages. Studying and teaching foreign language required comparison of languages that are taught and studied. Since Uzbekistan is considered as a multilingual country, a lot of attention is being focused on thedevelopment of typology because without knowing foreign languages it is impossible to establish political, economic and cultural ties with countries where foreign languages are spoken. Russian is considered to be La lingua franca in Central Asia. In Uzbekistan, bilingualism is based on knowing Uzbek and Russian languages. Besides, it is compulsory that at schools one of the foreign languages should be taught which has derived from the need to establish ties with all the countries of the world. Researches done in Uzbekistan on typology include comparative phonetics, comparative grammar, and comparative lexicology and so on. For thirty years, there have been numerous numbers of researches, books, monographs, dissertations, and articles have been published.
To sum up, all counted causes can be concluded in this way:

LECTURE 3. DIVISION OF THE LINGUISTIC TYPOLOGY WITH RESPECT TO THE OBJECT OF INVESTIGATION

Comparative Typology is the branch of General Linguistics, it compares two or more language systems, their categories in a deductive way and it makes general linguistic rules and laws. As for the classification of Comparative Typology, we must underline that there are different viewpoints to this problem. But the most sutable is Dr. Buranov’s classification, who suggested the following three criteria: 1) Branches of Comparative Typology as to the object of investigation; 2) Branches of Comparative Typology as to the levels of language hierarchy; 3) Branches of Comparative Typology as to two plans of language.

Branches of Comparative Typology as to the object of investigation:

Structural typology in its turn consists of the following types: typological theory; typological classification; etalon language; language universals.

Genetic typology is a branch of ComparativeTypology, which studies the similarities, and diversities of originally related languages. Genetic typology developed from the Comparative-historical linguistics that dominated during the 19th century in Europe. It started with the works of Jacob Grimm, Franz Bopp, Rasmus Rask, Alexander Vbstokov, V.M. Jirmunskiy, etc.
Its origin was stipulated by thediscovery of Sanskrit, the ancient classical language of India. The discovery of Sanskrit disclosed the possibility of a comparative study of languages. The concept of relative languages was confirmed by the existence in India of a sisterhood of familiar European languages: e.g. Sanskrit «mata» means «mother», in the accusative case
«matarum». Dvau-two, Trayah – three. As ti - he is, etc.
Genetic Typology compares the systems of languages in two ways: diachronically and synchronically.
Areal typology is one of the independent branches of linguistic typology, which compares language systems and studies the degree of expansion and proximity of language properties which are geographically conditioned.
According to V.G. Ghak this part of ComparativeTypology "compares languages irrespectively of the degree of their relatedness and aims at defining general elements formed as a result of themutual influence of languages and the cultures staying behind them». Objects of study include borrowings, bi-lingual features, dialects, centum/satem languages, compiling dialectal maps, sub- stratum and super-stratum languages, neologisms, archaisms, hybrid languages, language contacts, etc.
Like Genetic typology, Areal typology operates with special systems or models with the help of which areal isogfosses of different languages are clarified.
The representatives of this school are Roman Jacobson and Ghak V.G.
Comparative typologyis an independent branch of Comparative Typology. It deals with thecomparison of languages irrespectively of their genetic or structural identity. Comparative typology operates with a limited number of languages and the minimum number of these languages maybe as little as two.
LECTURE 7. TYPOLOGY OF PARTS OF SPEECH IN
ENGLISH,AND NATIVE LANGUAGES
A part of speech is a category of words (or, more generally, of lexical
items) which have similar grammatical properties. Words that are
assigned to the same part of speech generally display similar behavior in
terms of syntax—they play similar roles within the grammatical structure
of sentences—and sometimes in terms of morphology, in that they
undergoinflection for similar properties. In grammar, a part of speech
(also called lexical categories, grammatical categories or word classes) is
a linguistic category of words.
According to their meaning, morphological characteristics and
syntactical functions, words fall under certain classes called parts of
speech. We distinguish between notional and structural parts of speech in
English.
The notional parts of speech perform certain functions in the sentence.
The notional parts of speech are:
1. noun
2. adjective
3. pronoun
4. numeral
5. verb
6. adverb
7. words of the category of state
8. modal words
9. interjection
The structural parts of speech either express relations between words or
sentences or emphasize the meaning of words or sentences. They never
perform any independent function in the sentence. Here belong:
1. preposition
2. conjunction
3. particle
4. article