144
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How can the attested cross-linguistic patterns /generalizations be
explained?
The papers in the present volume do in fact focus on linguistic patterns that
can be discovered only by cross-linguistic comparison – cross-linguistically
recurrent
patterns of polysemy, heterosemy and semantic change – and are
therefore examples of typological research. The domain of research shared by the
papers
in the volume is, however, somewhat outside of the main interests of
modern typological research, that has so far primarily focused on grammatical and,
to
a lesser degree, phonetic / phonological phenomena under the labels of
“grammatical typology”, “syntactic typology”, “morphological typology”,
“morphosyntactic typology” (or, quite often, just “typology”), “phonetic typology”
and “phonological typology”. None of those would
suit the direction of the
volume. We are dealing here with lexical, with semantic phenomena – which is the
primary objects of lexical typology. The term “lexical typology” is often used as if
there was self-explanatory, but is only rarely explicitly defined. What can be meant
by lexical typology is, however,
less clear, apart from the evident fact that it
involves cross-linguistic research on the lexicon. Many
linguists will probably
agree with the definition that lexical typology is concerned with the “characteristic
ways in which language packages semantic material into words”. Viewed as such,
lexical typology can be considered a sub-branch of semantic typology concerned
with the lexicon. Other definitions of lexical typology focus on “typologically
relevant features in the grammatical structure of the lexicon” or on typologically
relevant vs. language-specific patterns of lexicon-grammar interaction.
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