definition of typology

[Bill Palmer]

Dear Yuri

I see the role of typology in the following way. The core research agenda of linguistics is to model the structure of language in the mind. A language is a set of almost entirely identical structural systems in the minds of each of its speakers, and every language is somehow an instantiation of the underlying mental language capacity. 

Four layers of research activity contribute to this core agenda: formal theory, typology, description, and documentation. Modelling the structure of language in the mind is the role of formal theory. However, to do this, formal theory depends on typology and description: in different ways, each tells formal theory what it must attempt to account for. Theories of language cannot be adequate if they are not based on an understanding of what occurs in language, both in terms of the range of possibilites across languages, and the details of structures within individual languages. The central role of typology is to provide the former, and description the latter. Typology is about understanding the boundaries around the possible in language.

Typology does this in three ways: 1) by identifying the full range of what is possible in each area of language structure by observing it in an actual language or languages; 2) more problematically, by inferring that some logically possible structures cannot occcur, on the basis of observing their complete absence from any actual language (although this may result from an accidental gap - such structures may exist in languages as yet undescribed, or in languages that became extinct last week or a thousand years ago, or will evolve out of a currently existing language - and attempting to distinguish between impossible structures and accidental gaps is also an issue facing typology as well as formal theory); and 3) also problematically, by determining which structures are universal, which common, and which rare. Formal theory then has the role of modelling the underlying mental structure of language in such a way that it allows for all of 1), while not predicting any of 2), and hopefully also accounting for 3) (particularly how a structure can be possible, but be what Corbett calls "vanishingly rare").

The role of language description is to provide as detailed as possible a description of the possible and impossible structures and their functions in individual languages. This provides formal theory with the very detailed data it needs to build thorough models, but it also provides typology with adequate descriptions on which to base its generalisations. Good description is theoretically and typologically informed, but should not in itself have a theoretical or typological focus (although good descriptive work often also results in research that address theoretical or typological issues).

So, formal theory depends on good typology and on good description, and typology also depends on good description. Description in turn depends on good documentation: as in any science, the more detailed, extensive and accurate the raw data, the more accurate the description of the phenomenon under observation, and ultimately the more adequate the theories developed on the basis of that data.

cheers
Bill


Dr Bill Palmer
Convenor, Pacific Languages Research Group
Linguistics Research Higher Degree and Honours coordinator
School of Humanities and Social Science
University of Newcastle
Callaghan NSW 2308
Australia
email bill.palmer at newcastle.edu.au
>>> Yuri Tambovtsev <yutamb at MAIL.RU> 16/01/10 10:57 PM >>>
Dear Typology colleagues, reading journals on typology I came to a conclusion that different linguists and edotors understand typology in their own way. It especially concerns editors who may return a manuscript on the pretext that it is not on typology. Therefore, it occurred to me to discuss the term "typology" in order to realise how it is understood in modern linguistics. Looking forward to receiving your definitions to yutamb at mail.ru  Yours sincerely Yuri Tambovtsev