linguistic typology
Sign in to saveAlso known as language typology, typology of languages, language classification, classification of languages
academic discipline categorizing languages
Linguistic typology is the study of how languages around the world can be organized into categories based on their shared structural features, such as word order or how they form grammatical relationships. It matters because it helps linguists understand the fundamental patterns and constraints in how human languages work, and reveals what kinds of language structures are common, rare, or even impossible.
AI-generated from the Wikipedia summary — may contain errors.
In the Vinony graph
Vinony's link graph records 572 inbound references to linguistic typology, and connects out to adposition, language family and synthetic language.
It sits within the topics Language comparison and Linguistic typology.
Vinony links it to 56 Wikipedia language editions.
Wikidata facts
- Subclass of
- linguistics
- Part of
- linguistics
Show 3 more facts
- topic's main category
- Category:Linguistic typology
- different from
- linguistic universal
- topic has template
- Template:Linguistic typology topics
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Encyclopedic overview
Linguistic typology (or language typology) is a field of linguistics that studies and classifies languages according to their structural features to allow their comparison. Its aim is to describe and explain the structural diversity and the common properties of the world's languages. Its subdisciplines include, but are not limited to: phonological typology, which deals with sound features; syntactic typology, which deals with word order and form; lexical typology, which deals with language vocabulary; and theoretical typology, which aims to explain the universal tendencies.
Linguistic typology is contrasted with genealogical linguistics on the grounds that typology groups languages or their grammatical features based on formal similarities rather than historic descendence. The issue of genealogical relation is however relevant to typology because modern data sets aim to be representative and unbiased. Samples are collected evenly from different language families, emphasizing the importance of lesser-known languages in gaining insight into human language.
Excerpted from Wikipedia’s “linguistic typology” article, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.