Lecture №2. Historical background of typological investigations

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 science of linguistic comparison was developing quite slowly and a number of factors played an important role to foster that process.They were also suggested by Dr. Buranov.

The first factor istypological imitation, means using identified style or form of languages to explain another language. For example, the first Latin grammar "De Lingua Latina" (117-27 ВС) by Varron was written with the use of the ancient Greek language grammars compiled by Greek philosophers. His
great contributions were changing 5 cases in Greek into 6 and 8 parts of speech into 7 in English.
Later, the grammar of European languages was shaped based on Latin and
Greek languages. Besides, nowadays not only grammar but poetic speech and other
language units are still based on Greek grammar.
Also, while studying certain categories of one language scholars very often use the models of more researched languages, e.g. the ancient Indian models of compound words are used to describe many European languages