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<p class="MsoNormal" style=""><span lang="EN-US">Since Yuri insists
that there should be more answers to his
everything else but trivial question, three remarks about what typology
is not
(as I see it):<u1:p></u1:p><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style=""><span lang="EN-US"><u1:p></u1:p>Linguistic
typology is no AOC (appellation d’origine
contrôlée). It is not like Champagne, it is rather like Emmental
cheese,
everybody is allowed to produce it (provided that the market accepts
it). An
example for a discipline in linguistics that is a clearer label is
Romance
linguistics. You cannot work on Takelma and Burushaski exclusively and
claim
that you are doing Romance linguistics. There have been various
attempts to
make typology into a more strictly defined label, but none of them has
been
successful hitherto. This has both disadvantages and advantages. An
advantage
is more freedom of research than in other disciplines. Typologists are
allowed
to ask interesting questions about language whether or not these
questions fit
a certain established framework. Whoever put it there there is a good
definition of typology on the ALT homepage: "the scientific study of
typology, that is, of cross-linguistic diversity and the patterns
underlying
it" (<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://www.linguistic-typology.org/">http://www.linguistic-typology.org/</a>). This leaves many things open
and focuses on three central aspects: cross-linguistic, diversity, and
underlying patterns. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style=""><span lang="EN-US"><u1:p></u1:p>Typology
is not exactly the same thing as field
linguistics, even though much of what Hyman (2001) says about fieldwork
as a
state of mind applies to typology as well (e.g., "going out into the
unknown" [2001: 29], "study whatever is out there" [2001: 30]).
There is certainly a very tight symbiosis of field linguistics and
typology and
this for many very good reasons, but if the two were exactly the same
thing
there wouldn't be any need of a discipline typology or for an
Association for
Linguistic Typology.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style=""><span lang="EN-US">Typology as a
linguistic discipline is not the same thing as
typology in the sense of a classification or taxonomy. Scientific
disciplines
are mass nouns; typology in the sense of classification is a count
noun. It is
true that many books and articles on typology propose a typology and
many
papers contain the prefab "Toward a typology of...", which seems to
be an abbreviation for "Toward a typological [in the sense of the
discipline] typology [in the sense of classification] of...". However,
typological work does not necessarily always have the goal of
establishing a
new classification of languages into types.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style=""><span style="font-size: 11pt;"
lang="EN-US">Hyman, Larry M. (2001). Fieldwork as a
state of mind. In Newman, Paul & Ratliff, Martha (eds.), <i
style="">Linguistic Fieldwork</i>, 15-33. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press.</span></p>
<span style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman";"
lang="EN-US">Bernhard Wälchli<br style="">
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<span lang="EN-US"><span style=""><o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
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