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

Typological classification

• Typological classification is … “opposed to genealogical classification and is bound to classifying languages according to their taxonomic/systemic features and defining structural types of languages” (K.Solntzev).
• Morphological or Typological classification deals with the classification of lan­guages according to their structural features or types in language instead of the genealogical origin.
• An example of a typological classification is 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, languages. (English, for instance, belongs to the SVO lan­guage type.)

Branches of structural typology

Ethalon (meta) language
a) It is an object language for Comparative Typology and also a means or system of tools to compare languages; c) For applied purposes, ethalon language is classified into minimal and maximal. The notion of ethalon language was introduced by Boris Uspenskiy.

Ethalon language: description

Ethalon language – is a language which is perceived or taken as a standard against which other languages are compared or evaluated, such as Latin in medieval and early modern Europe.

The notion has been developed and elaborated by the Russian linguist Uspenskiy. He says that any typology is based on a metalanguage, which is the same as an etalon language to make transformations from it to real languages and back, from real languages to an ethalon (Uspenskiy 1965).

Types of ethalon language

specially created artificial language;
an existing language with the well-developed system;
certain sign system; certain linguistic method;
phonetic, morphological, syntactic or other models;
intermediary language; the language of translation.