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V.
Typology of lexical level of English and Native
Languages
5.1.
Lexical Typology and its branches
The term “typology”, as is well known, has many different uses. What
primarily matters for the present volume is typology understood as “the study of
linguistic patterns that are found cross-linguistically, in particular, patterns that can
be discovered solely by cross-linguistic comparison”. Typology can also refer to
thetypological classification of languages into (structural) types on the basis of
particular patterns for particular phenomena. Typological research is driven by the
persuasion that the variation across attested (and, further, possible) human
languages is severely restricted, and aims therefore at unveiling systematicity
behind the whole huge complex of linguistic diversity. In pursuing their tasks,
typologists raise – and often try to answer – important theoretical questions, such
as:
•
According to what parameters does a specific phenomenon vary
across languages, in what patterns do these parameters (co-)occur?
•
What generalisations can be made about attested vs. possible patterns?
•
What is universal vs. language particular in a given phenomenon,
what phenomena are frequent vs. rare?
•
How are various linguistic phenomena distributed across the
languages of the world?
•
Which phenomena are genetically stable and which are subject to
contactinduced change?
•
How can the attested distribution of the different patterns across
languages be explained?
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