Language comparison was long restricted to the question of phylogenetic inheritance (e.g. Bopp 1816; Schleicher 1860), but since authors such as Humboldt (1822) and von der Gabelentz (1891), linguists have also been interested in an ahistorical kind of comparison that is now often called “linguistic typology” – and which has become increasingly prestigious since Greenberg (1963), Chomsky (1981), and the 1997 foundation of the journal Linguistic Typology (LT). Continue reading
Monthly Archives: September 2020
Comparability and measurement in linguistic typology: Some comments on Round & Corbett (2020)
Round & Corbett’s (2020) paper on “comparability and measurement in typological science” is an interesting contribution to the question of what kinds of concepts linguists (should) use to compare languages. Continue reading
On Matthew Spike’s comments on comparative concepts in linguistics
Since the early 20th century, linguists have generally recognized that different languages are different not only historically (with different genealogical origins) and culturally (with different words reflecting their speakers’ cultural needs), but also structurally: The meanings of words cut up reality in different ways, and grammatical categories in different languages do not map straightforwardly onto each other. Phonological systems make use of phonetic possibilities in different ways in different languages. More generally, each language is structurally unique (Haspelmath 2021). Continue reading