LECTURE 2
Historical background
of typological
investigation
The questions of timing the history of
linguistic comparison are quite
complicated and are the ones, which
have not found their final solution yet.
The history of linguistic comparison
is an integral part of linguistic science
development, which is bound with the
history of thenation and cognition.
That is why there are no generally
accepted criteria for timing this
problem yet. We will see Dr.
Buranov’s viewpoint. In his book
“Сравнительная типология
английского и тюркских языков” he
identifies 4 periods in the history of
typological studies:
The first period is characterized as a spontaneous or
evolutionary. It begins with the emergence of the first
linguistic works.That period was over not long before
the Renaissance. In Ancient Greece, the language
was studied in the frames of philosophy. The major
issue, which was in the focus of discussion, was
acorrelation of substances to their names. Still,
already in the works of Protagoras and Aristotle,
there are statements related to distinguishing words,
word combinations, linguistic categories like gender,
case, number, thedefinition of the sentence,
classification of words into names and actions or
parts of speech. These works served as the basis for
distinguishing linguistics into an independent
science. E.g. many scholars, while compiling
grammars of separate languages used the models of
the languages with already described grammatical
structures. (The principle of analogy). For example,
while compiling the first English grammars the
models of Latin were widely used. The first
grammars for the European languages were based on
The second period is characterized as a
period of establishing the first scientific
comparison of languages and this period is
related to the General and Rational
Grammar: Port-Royal Grammar by
Arnauld A, Lancelot C, (XVII c.) in Indo-
European languages. Port-Royal Grammar
can be considered one of the most
precious contributions to thedevelopment
of Comparative Typology. It was
developed by 2 French monks in the small
abbey Port-Royal in the suburbs of Paris
(published in 1660). It is the synthesis of
linguistic and philosophic ideas of that
time. The languages (French, Latin, Greek
and ancient Jewish/ Ides) with thedifferent
genealogic origin and typological
structure were compared based on the
criteria and principles elaborated by
Arnauld A. and Claude Lancelot.
Comparative study of Turkic language has its own history. Divan-Lugat At-Turk by
Mahmud Kashgariy is considered the most solid work on thelinguistic
compari¬son of Turkic languages. Mahmud Kashgariy analyzed phonetic,
grammatical and lexical units of a group of Turkic languages and defined the level
of their genetic relation to each other. Further development of comparative study
can be traced in theappearance of glossaries and dictionaries, e.g. Turkic-Mongol-
Persian dictionary compiled in Egypt (1245), Latin-Persian Kypchak dictionary
(XII c), and other works. One of the most prominent work is the poem of Alisher
Navoi "Muhokamatul al-Lugatain" (Debate of two languages) written in 1499.
Navoi compares lexical, grammatical and word building specificities of 2 geneti
cally non-related languages: old Uzbek and Persian. Navoi reveals a number of lan
guage specificities of Uzbek, which did not have direct correspondences in Persian,
e.g. suffixes of reflexivity, reciprocity, causation, modality, comparativeness, etc
The third period is related to development of comparative historical linguistics,
genealogical and typological classification of languages, (mid- XIX c.)
The fourth period is related to establishing of
Comparative Typology as a separate science
with the bulk of General Linguistics. It coincides
with the XX century.
The first factor is typological imitation, means using identified
style or form of languages to explain another language. For example, the
first Latin grammar "De Lingua Latina" (117-27 ВС) by Varron was
written with the use of the ancient Greek language grammars compiled by
Greek philosophers. His great contributions were changing 5 cases in
Greek into 6 and 8 parts of speech into 7 in English.
Later, the grammar of European languages was shaped based on Latin
and Greek languages. Besides, nowadays not only grammar but poetic
speech and other language units are still based on Greek grammar.
Also, while studying certain categories of one language scholars
very often use the models of more researched languages, e.g. the ancient
Indian models of compound words are used to describe many European
languages
The second factor is characterized as a period of the appearance
of scientific comparative works. Comparisons of languages and
linguistic units date back to the ancient 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 the rapid
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 langauage 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 a writing 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 a
writing 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.
The fourth factor is the influence of
the translation and translation science.
Translation is a quite ancient science.
When people started to translate from
one language into another they
unconsciously compared two
languages. That is why they consider
translation to be the main part of
typology. The influence of translation
to typology can be classified as
followings:
translation of fiction stories;
translation of grammatical forms;
translations that are done under the
influence of mathematical
linguistics.
The fifth factor is the influence of lexicography. The appearance
of dictionaries was bound with applied need to transform and
compare languages and national cultures. While compiling bi- or
multilingual dictionaries a lexicographer conducts a comparison
of all levels of language hierarchy: phonetic units, grammatical
structure, lexical units, word formation, punctuation, etc.
The sixth factor is practical and theoretical study and teaching of
foreign languages. Studying and teaching foreign language
required comparison of languages that are taught and studied.
Since Uzbekistan is considered as a multilingual country, a lot of
attention is being focused on the development of typology
because without knowing foreign languages it is impossible to
establish political, economic and cultural ties with countries
where foreign languages are spoken. Russian is considered to be
La lingua franca in Central Asia. In Uzbekistan, bilingualism is
based on knowing Uzbek and Russian languages. Besides, it is
compulsory that at schools one of the foreign languages should be
taught which has derived from the need to establish ties with all
the countries of the world. Researches done in Uzbekistan on
typology include comparative phonetics, comparative grammar
and comparative lexicology and so on. For thirty years, there
have been numerous numbers of researches, books, monographs,
dissertations, and articles have been published.
Process of
Comparative studying
- historical unstudied
method languages
Causes of appearing Development
Typological of translation
Comparative
imitation
Typology
Learning
Process of Finding foreign
making new languages
dictionarie universal theoretically
s methods and practically
Thus, which term we use, we deal with only the universal task of Comparative Typology it
is charting out and finding the reasons for the similarities and differences among the
world‘s languages. With the help of above mentioned statements, the tasks of Comparative
Typology can be outlined so:
the problems of comparative investigations of all aspects of the language including
phonetics, phonology, morphology, syntax, lexicon, and phraseology of related and non-
related languages from linguistic and lingua didactic viewpoints;
the problem of categorization in linguistics;
investigations in the sphere of Comparative Stylistics;
investigations in the sphere of Comparative Lexicology;
Language and intercultural communication;
revealing national-cultural features of related and non-related languages;
correlation and integration of semantics, word-building, syntax, stylistics and functional
semantics on the base of text linguistics in typological aspect (or in comparison).
Thanks for attention
