Subject and Aims of Typological Studies of Native and Foreign Languages. Language Typology and Others Branches of Linguistics

Lecture 1. Subject and Aims of Typological Studies of Native and Foreign Languages. Language Typology and Others Branches of Linguistics.

1. Introduction to the course.

2. General and special typology.

3. Aspects of typological investigations.

4. Branches of language typology.

5. Typology and other branches of linguistics.

1. Introduction to the course.

The word “typology” has Greek origin and is derived from two words “typos” – form and “logos” - study, which means “form study”, in Russian: “отпечаток, форма, образец” and “слово, учение”.

Linguistic typology is the comparative studying of the structural and functional peculiarities of the languages independently from the character of the gentic relations between them.

Typology is one of the two main aspects of language learning together with comparatively-historic (genetic) aspect, which is different from it ontologically (by significant characteristic features of the research’s subject) and epistomologically (by complex of principles and devices, methods of study).

Investigating different languages, namely English, Russian and Kazakh, one can easily find out similar features in most of them, though they are kindred and nonkindred languages.

At the same time, it should be noted that from the structural point of view, languages belong to one and the same genetic group differing from each other.

Generic structural features are found in most various languages belonging to different language groups.

Being one of the Indo-European languages English is the most spread language in the world today. It is difficult today, to find a man, contesting the necessity of having a good command of English. It is useful to know it not only for reading the press, seeing the films and listening to the popular music.

It is impossible to overestimate meaning of the foreign language for the man, who dreams to make a successful career. The English language – the language of Shakespeare and the “Bitlz”, the language of the greatest literature, the language of world’s business, of intoxicating success and of world’s popularity.

A half of the humanity speaks English, and that is – hundreds millions of men.

Approximately 75% of all scientific papers are published in English, 70% of the world’s mail is written in English. It is also the language of shipping and air-travel.

The English language is the first or joint first language in 70 countries, while French is spoken in 34 countries and Arabic is spoken in 23 countries.

About 500 million people speak English as a first or joint-first language. This is the 10% of the world population. English is also spoken as a second language by another 300 million people. It’s estimated that 25% of the Chinese 1 billion (million of millions in England; thousand of millions in the USA) 200 million population are studying English. The merest estimate of the number of people in the world who can speak English is about 2 billion out of 6 billion.

Furthermore, we’ll deal with typological studies of such rich languages, like English, Kazakh and Russian. For instance, in English, in German and in some other Germanic languages we can meet a lot of words of common root, such as “mother” in English and “die Mütter” in German, “father” in English and “der Fater” in German, “day” in English and “der Tag” in German, “water” in English and “das Wasser” in German, “door” in English and “die Tür ” in German, “ana” in Kazakh and “ayne” in Turkish.

Many more examples can be given in this aspect. It is explained by the fact that these languages, i.e. English and German belong to one genetic group, namely

Germanic family of languages.

At the same time it should be noted that in some other cases languages belonging to one and the same genetic group differ from each other greatly. For example, the article in English has no morphological categories, accordingly no morphological forms; it neither agrees with nor governs the noun it refers to. But in German the article has morphological categories of case and gender. As the result of it, the article agrees with the noun it refer to in case and gender category of the noun.

Furthermore, the article is the only means of indicating the gender-category of the noun in German. Such as “der Bruder” – masculine gender, “die Schwester”- feminine gender, “das Fenster” – neuter gender.

Another example. In modern English the noun has only two case forms- the common case and the genetive case. But in modern German the noun has four case forms - Nominativ, Genetiv, Dativ, Akkusativ.

Facts like this show that though the two languages- English and German- belong to one and the same genetic group, namely to Germanic group of languages there exist great differences between them. This should be explained by the fact that though these languages are cognate, each of them developed independently in different social and psychological surroundings; on their own national base.

General structural features are also found in most various languages belonging to quite different language groups, for example: Attributive phrases in which the adjective precedes the noun without agreement exist in English, Turkish, Mongolian, Chinese, Japanese.

This appropriateness probably should be explained by the fact that though mankind consists of different nations having their own language, it has somewhat the same manner of thinking and reasoning. On these grounds in different languages we can observe similarities, for instance: the use of the attribitive phrase expressed by  the adjective, numeral, etc., before the noun they refer to in most developed languages, as it is mentioned above. Some more examples can be given in this field.

According to this structural feature the above-mentioned languages may form a certain group with common structure having the same kind of attributive phrases.

So, the branch of linguistics which investigates grouping of languages according to their main, essential characteristic features and revealing general appropriateness of different languages is called Typological Linguistics. Typological linguistics also studies the type of languages and type of language structure. According to its object and aim typology is conditionally divided into general and special typology.