Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of figures
- List of tables
- Preface to the second edition
- Preface to the first edition
- List of abbreviations
- List of symbols
- 1 Introduction
- 2 Typological classification
- 3 Implicational universals and competing motivations
- 4 Grammatical categories: typological markedness, economy and iconicity
- 5 Grammatical hierarchies and the semantic map model
- 6 Prototypes and the interaction of typological patterns
- 7 Syntactic argumentation and syntactic structure in typology
- 8 Diachronic typology
- 9 Typology as an approach to language
- List of references
- Map of languages cited
- Author index
- Language index
- Subject index
7 - Syntactic argumentation and syntactic structure in typology
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 June 2012
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of figures
- List of tables
- Preface to the second edition
- Preface to the first edition
- List of abbreviations
- List of symbols
- 1 Introduction
- 2 Typological classification
- 3 Implicational universals and competing motivations
- 4 Grammatical categories: typological markedness, economy and iconicity
- 5 Grammatical hierarchies and the semantic map model
- 6 Prototypes and the interaction of typological patterns
- 7 Syntactic argumentation and syntactic structure in typology
- 8 Diachronic typology
- 9 Typology as an approach to language
- List of references
- Map of languages cited
- Author index
- Language index
- Subject index
Summary
In chapter 1, we described the three types of typological analysis – typological classification, typological generalization and (functional–)typological explanation – as the three stages in the process of doing empirical science. We also noted that these three stages are interleaved in all scientific practice, typology included. In the subsequent chapters, we made use of this by discussing explanations along with the typological universals (generalizations) that were described in those chapters.
Typological generalization presupposes a basis of cross-linguistic comparison, and in §1.4 we argued that the basis for cross-linguistic comparison is ultimately external, that is, semantic and discourse function for morphosyntax, and phonetic reality for phonology. Thus, the types of universals that one can identify through cross-linguistic comparison are universals of the relationship between linguistic form (morphosyntactic or phonological) and external function or reality. This is the sense in which the typological approach to grammar is functionalist.
The functional–typological approach does not eliminate linguistic form from analysis; far from it. The functional–typological approach does not deny the existence of arbitrariness in grammar (Croft 1995a:504–09). It takes the existence of variation across and within languages as evidence that grammatical structures result from an interplay of convention (which is arbitrary; Lewis 1969) and functional motivation. In fact, typology is more inclined to accept the existence of arbitrariness in language than formalist approaches which seek to explain virtually every idiosyncratic fact, or (nontypological) functionalist approaches that attempt to do the same thing (see §§1.3, 9.2).
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- Information
- Typology and Universals , pp. 194 - 231Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2002