Chapter The importance of internation patterns in esl classes

2.2 Classroom interaction and interaction practices.
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 the structural similarities between languages, regardless of their history, as part of an attempt to establish satisfactory classification or typology of languages. Typological comparison is thus distinguished from the historical comparison of languages […] and its groupings may not coincide with those set up by the historical method”⁸. Phonological Typology involves comparing languages according to the number or a type of a sound they contain. Although there are inevitable problems in dividing the sounds of any language into separate abstract units (phonemes), linguists usually compare languages according to the number of different groups which participate in meaningful sound contrasts (i.e. phonemes) rather than the total number of actual speech sounds. Every language has a fairly small inventory of these sets or phonemes. Moreover, the number varies from language to language. In comparison, Hawaiian has only 18; Kabardian has over 80, and the Russian language is reported to have 141 phonemes or mutually contrastive sets of sounds, Abhasian has 60.
The second aspect of Phonological Typology classifies languages according to the type of sounds present or absent in each language. Some sounds are only rarely found in languages.
Unusual sounds include: the Czech and Slovak voiced sound [h], Arabic pharyngeal. Arabic, English, new-Greek, Bashkirian [ө] and [ә], in Danish [ð] only, Uzbek, Arabic [қ], [ғ], [ҳ].
Unusual omissions also include labial (nearly completely absent in Cherokee, Tlingit), nasals (absent in /several Salish languages), Sibiliants (absent in Hawaiian).
No known language entirely lacks either obstruent or sonorant. No known language entirely lacks either vowels or consonants, although Rotoras has only six consonants, certain North-West Caucasian languages such as Kabardian have only one vowel.
Languages are also classified into consonantal if the consonants are absolutely more than vowels and non-consonantal if the number of vowels is more, equal or even nearly equal (A. Isachenko; T. Kovalev).
Kramsky developed the theory of A. Isachenko analyzing the number of consonant-vocals in the text, when T.Milevsky analyses number correlation with quality of sounds-Eastern (Atlantic), Western (Pacific Oceanic) and Middle sound type American languages.
The first founders of phonetics were such outstanding linguists as I.A.Badouin de Courtenay, N. Krushevsky, P.Passy, A.Sweet, F.de Saussure and others.
The Prague linguistic school was the center of Phonological Typology in its time.
There are other well-known linguists such as R. Jacobson, C. G. Fant, M. Halle (spectrographic/acoustic classification), A. Isachenko, T. Kovalev, I. Kramsky, T. Milevsky, J. C. Pierce (quantitative criterion), A. Martine (suprasegmental typological classification), G. P. Melnikov, V. A. Vasilyev, E. D. Polivanov, A. M. Sherbak and others.
The main achievement in the development of Phonological Typology is phonological universals. E.g. All languages have vowels and consonants. If a language has voiced fricatives, it also has unvoiced fricatives, but not necessarily the other way round.
Phonetics is the isolated and independent level in language hierarchy. It is more investigated science in Linguistics.
The following types of Phonetics may be distinguished:

1.