Ministry of higher and secondary special education of the republic uzbekistan state world languages university

2. Branches of Comparative Typology as to the levels of language hierarchy



Comparative Typology operates at all levels of language hierarchy without exception. In other words, it can compare the units of phonetic, phonological, morphological, syntactic and lexical levels.
In comparison with other levels the given level is more isolated and at the same time, its sections are more developed from the typological point of view. Inside the phonological level actually phonologic and phonetic sublevels are identified.
Phonetic and phonological typology deals with comparison of units of the phonologic lev­el of language. It engages in allocation of phonological differential signs, defining their universality, study of phonological structure of languages, classification of lan­guages on the basis of their phonological features (e.g. tonic and atonic languages), defining phonemic structure of world languages and many others. For a long time the Prague linguistic school was the center of Phonological typology. A certain con­tribution to development of Phonological typology was made by N.S.Trubetskoy who is considered the founder of Typology of Phonological systems. R.Yakobson , G.Fant, M.Halle also worked in this area. Later other sides of Phonological typol­ogy were developed by such scientists as Ch. Hockett , K.Vegelin, T.Milevsky, P.Menzerat, V.Skalichka, A.Martine, M.I.Lekomtseva, T.J.EUzarenkova, Abduazi-zov A.A., G.P.Melnikov and others.
Major achievements of Phonological typology relate to: the allocated cases pho­nologic universals, N.S.Trubetskoy's differential signs, I.Kramskoy, P.Kovaleva's quantitative criteria, supra-segmental typological classification on tone and accent by A.Martine's, numerous researches on comparison of phonological systems of vari­ous languages.
The circle of research in Morphological typology is very wide. It compares the units of a morphological level. Depending on the character of research the morpho­logical typology can classify into two types:

• 
  Morphological typology engaged in the morphological classification
  of languages;
  
• 
  Morphological typology engaged in particular questions of grammar, i.e. parts of speech and their grammatical categories.
  The first one is a continuation of traditional typological classification engaged in defining language types according to different principles and criteria.
  

The second type of Morphological typology deals with private/individual subjects of comparison: grammatical categories in various languages, defining ways of their expression, morphological markers, synonymous relations of affixational morphemes and syntactic words (prepositions and postpositions), comparison of primary gram­matical categories/parts of speech (nouns, adjectives, pronouns, verbs, adverbs, numerals and others), comparison of grammatical categories of certain lexical and grammatical categories of words (case, number, definiteness, transitivity - intransitivity, time, aspect, causation, mood, modality, etc.). Morphemes may serve major units of measurement in Morphological typology.
Morphological typology compares the specified phenomena in the systems of both related and non-related languages. Comparison might include revealing mor­phological universals as well as a binary comparison of two languages. Morphologi­cal typology has accumulated a serious bulk of data both for Comparative typology and on separate concrete languages. Major scholars who dealt with the issues of Morphological typology are L. E Jеlmsiev, R.Yakobson, L.N.Zasorina, B.A.Uspenskiy, M.M.Guhman, P.L Garvina and many others.
Syntactic typology engages in comparison of syntactic level units. The basic units for comparison are word-combination and the sentence. Depending on the character of research Syntactic typology may fall into several sections: comparison of units of a word-combination, the level of the sentence, as well as comparison of units of various levels with regards to their syntactic functioning. Syntactic typology usually compares languages on the basis of transformational syntax.
Still there is no comprehensive list of topics related to the subject matter of Syn­tactic typology. Some of them are: definition of the subject-matter and volume of Syntactic typology, elaboration of basic criteria and a meta language, border lines between syntactic typology and other branches of Comparative Typology, defining syn­tactic universals, study of syntax of world languages (genetically or structurally re­lated languages), definition of types of syntactic connection (attributive, predicative, etc.), definition of sentence types in languages, basic syntactic categories, classifica­tion of types of languages on the basis of their syntactic structure and many others.
I.I.Meshchaninov, C.E.Bazell, T.Milevsky, V.S.Hrakovskiy, J.V.Rojdestvenskiy contributed a lot to elaboration of different aspects of Syntactic typology.
3. Branches of Comparative Typology as to two plans of language

Formal typology deals with the units of expression plan of the language which belong to various levels of language hierarchy.
The ultimate goal of Formal typology is identifying formal universals. The major tasks of Formal typology embrace but are not limited to the following:

• 
  re­veal external or formal features of the language;
  
• 
  establish common principles of script, e.g. graphic systems, alphabets, system of transcription signs, punctuation;
  
• 
  establish formal structures of the syllable, composite words, word combinations;
  
• 
  establish formal structure of the sentence etc.
  

Semantic typology is a branch of Comparative Typology studying semantic structure of the language and related to the units of content plan. The ultimate goal of Se­mantic typology is identifying semantic universals which are directly related to the deep structure of the language. Other issues considered in the frames of Semantic ty­pology are: identifying aims and problems of Semantic typology, defining different semantic fields for comparative analysis, grouping words on the basis of semantic signs, defining semantic fields in different languages, creating criteria to define se­mantic categories, elaboration of the principles of compiling semantic comparative dictionaries and many others.
Some scholars debate that there is no need to distinguish Semantic typology into a separate branch as similar issues are studied under the scope of Lexical typol­ogy. The major difference between the two seems to lie in the following: Semantic typology operates with the units of emic level and is indifferent to ethic identity of compared languages.