Language Typology

Language typology involves the classification of languages according to their grammatical structure and not on the basis of genetic affiliation.

There are four basic types: analytic (little or no morphology), synthetic (many polyfunctional inflections), agglutinative (monofunctional transparent inflections), polysynthetic/incorporating (extreme compression of lexical and morphological forms).

• There would seem to be a typological cycle such that languages develop from analytic to synthetic, back to analytic and so on. The shift to a synthetic type occurs largely when word forms coalesce and grammaticalisation occurs. A language can become analytic when it loses inflections through phonetic attrition as has happened in the history of English. This cycle need not be so neat and simple: there are frequently conflicting forces operating in a language so that incorporation and analysis may arise concurrently.

• Typology also concerns the question of universals. These refer to features which are present in all or nearly all languages. Furthermore some universals imply the existence of others and are hence called implicational universals, a term coined by Joseph Greenberg, a leading figure in contemporary typological study.

• Language type involves a number of factors. Morphological structure is one but syntactic organisation (so-called 'clause alignment') is another. This covers a number of features and linguists have noted that features with similar values tend to cluster together. A language which shows similar values for the various syntactic features is termed harmonic and this would seem to be a goal towards which a language may drift, other factors permitting.