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
Preface to the first edition
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
This volume is an introduction to the concepts and methodology of linguistic typology. It complements other introductory volumes on typology, particularly Comrie 1989 and Mallinson and Blake 1981, in that the material is organized by theoretical concept (implicational universal, markedness, prototype) rather than by topic area (word order, grammatical relations, relative clauses, animacy). Also, the range of concepts covered is somewhat broader, mostly because of the need to describe developments in functional–typological explanation and diachronic typology in the last decade. Needless to say, there is some overlap with the aforementioned volumes. From a pedagogical point of view, however, this volume is intended to complement, not supplement, the more topic-oriented introductions. In particular, breadth in theoretical coverage has meant that detailed examples of typological generalizations, complete with qualifications, possible counterexamples and explanations for those counterexamples, could not always be included (though I have tried not to oversimplify examples without at least citing more detailed studies). The material in this volume has been used in courses in conjunction with Comrie 1989, Greenberg 1966a (the original article on word order), Greenberg 1966b (the monograph on markedness) and other articles on more specific topic areas.
I believe that an essential part of any linguistics class, and above all any class on typology, is for the student to encounter one or more ‘exotic’ languages. For practical reasons, in an introductory typology class this encounter must be somewhat limited.
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- Information
- Typology and Universals , pp. xvii - xviiiPublisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2002