Lecture №2. Historical background of typological investigations

The second factor is characterized as a period of the appearance of scientific comparative works.Comparisons of languages and linguistic units date back to theancient period. Comparisons were scripted in “Port Royal Grammar” where ancient scholars such as Antoine

Arnauld,Claude Lancelot, analyzed similarities and differences between French, Latin, Greek and ancient Jewish languages. They have found out that out of these languages ancient Jewish language did not share substantial similarity with other languages. The Port Royal Grammar was extremely popular and gave an impetus to therapid development of comparative studies.

Until recent times, this book has been used in modern typology. N. Kretsman pointed out this book’s importance and said: “In the last seven or eight years the “Port Royal Grammar” has been discussed more often in the English speaking world than at any other time since its publication more than three hundred years ago”.
Comparative Typology that dealt with comparing of language units and languages that did not share common root language played an important role in the

emerging and developing of this subject. Comparison of structural languages that were not substantial also was crucial in the development of ComparativeTypology.

The third factor is the least common factor, which deals with studying unknown languages and languages that do not have awriting system.Recently, an enormous bulk of researches has been done on languages in Latin America, Asia, Africa, Australia, Oceania and Eurasia that do not have awriting system. Studying these languages have influenced by comparing them to Indo-European languages and these investigations have influenced on typology greatly. Previous researches focused on genetic relation but new researches are focusing on morphological similarities, classification, and other points.