Lecture 3: Classification of Comparative Typology According to Dr. Buranov

Classification of language universals

Classification of language universals
Restricted (partial/relative)/unrestricted (absolute/full)
Deductive/
inductive
Synchronic/diachronic
Speech/language

Branches of structural typology

Language universals

a) The unification of language facts, common features specific to systems of all or separate language groups; b) Classification of principles of language universals: statistics (restricted/unrestricted), language hierarchy (phonetic, morphological, syntactic and lexical universals), deduc­tive and inductive; synchronic and diachronic universals; universals of speech and universals of language; c) Ways of describing language universals: de­scriptive and formal (with the help of special symbols).

Universals according to language hierarchy

Universals of language
Phonetic features: all languages have vowels and consonants.
Morphological: in most languages, words are structured into morphemes; Morphemes function as full and auxiliary elements.
Lexical: in all languages vocabulary is a system of semantic fields. In all languages, there is polysemy, synonymy, antonymy.
Syntactic: in all languages, there is a distribution of a subject-verb- object.

Branches of structural typology

Typological classification

a) Unlike genealogical classification, it classifies languages according to their taxonomic/systemic features and defines structural types of languages. It classifies lan­guages according to their structural features or types in language; b) E.g. the classification of languages based on the order of the verb, subject and object in a sentence into several types: SVO, SOV, VSO, and so on, (English, for instance, belongs to the SVO lan­guage type).