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The concept of type in a language
In typology there are three notions and, correspondingly, three terms the meaning of which is to keep strictly in mind:
1) type of a language, by which is meant the steady totality of the leading features of a language which are in certain relations with the fact of presence or absence of any feature providing the presence or absence of another feature: if we have A, we must have B, i.e, if in a given language ‘agreement’ is the type of a syntagmatic connection in gender, than with the necessity in this language there is a category of gender – велик-е сел-о / велик-а деревн-я (Ukrainian). In English language, where the type of syntagmatic connection is presented with ‘adjoining’, such grammatical phenomenon is impossible;
2) language type, by which is to be understood a stable totality of the leading features of a language which are in certain relations without reference to any concrete language ( flective languages, agglutinative languages with the prevalence of their synthetic or analytical features), etc;
3) type in a language, i.е. the presence in one language of the features correlating with the features of another language type. Of specific interest in Modern English are, foe example, the units which by their structural characteristics remind of the nominalized complexes mostly characteristic for incorporative languages and may be regarded as ‘a type in a language’:
-I don’t want to break this marriage up but I like her youth, her animal-like behaviour and don’t- give- -a- damn attitude.
- Perhaps this ‘What’s his name’ will prepare us cocoa’
- She looked at him with a move-if-you-dare expression”
Alongside the theoretical conclusion that the type of a language is sooner defined by the set of structures mostly characteristic for each and every language in question it is possible to add that the linguistic signs can also manifest language type they belong to through the type of realization their ontological property of asymmetry.The property of asymmetry manifests itself most convincingly in all developed languages, making them more expressive and stylistically refined. Though the degree of realizing this propertydepends on a language structural type when the number of different meanings inside the structure of meaning varies. Especially it is evident on the examples of formal units: in a Ukrainian adjective ‘гарний ‘ inflection - ий is polysemantic ( gender, number, case), while in English ‘beautiful’ a derivational suffix –ful is monosemantic which is explained by analytical structure of Modern English and, accordingly, the absence of a grammatical category of gender. Though , in Modern English other grammatical morphemes as in ‘a dog’, dogs’, ‘to look’, ‘looked’, ’nice ‘ also express several grammatical meanings at once though not so widely as in synthetic languages: in ‘a dog’ - ‘a’ is a marker of the categories 1/ noun; 2/ number, 3/ countability; ‘dogs’ -zero /-s inflection gives a notion of the categories of 1/ number and 2/ countability; in “to look” the particle ‘to’ signals the categories of 1/ verb, 2/ indefiniteness; in ‘looked ‘ ‘-ed’ gives a notion of 1/ action 2/ time both implying such a feature as ‘animateness’ too, ‘ aa adjective ‘nice’ includes the features of 1/attributiveness, 2/quality and 3/ degree of quality. So the property of asymmetry presupposes the ability of a linguistic sign to develop certain additional characteristics when being used in speech.
The type of correlation of the two planes in the structure of a linguistic sign depends on different intralinguistic factors, i.e. those pertaining to the very essence of the language organization – synthetism or analyticism. V. Skalitchka 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.
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