语言类型学与普遍语法特征

Typology and Universals

William Croft, University of New Mexico

1. Introduction: the typological and generative approaches to language universals

Typology represents an approach to the study of linguistic structure that differs in certain important respects from the generative and the functionalist approaches (Wasow, this volume; Van Valin, this volume), although it is closer in spirit to the latter. The most important difference between typology and these other approaches to linguistic structure is that the typological approach is fundamentally crosslinguistic in nature. A formalist linguist can, and most formalist linguists do, analyze a single language in the search for universals of language structure. There are formalist analyses of many different individual languages, but relatively few crosslinguistic formalist studies (a notable exception is the work of Mark Baker, e.g. Baker 2003; but see Croft 2008). A functionalist linguist can, and often does, analyze a single language in the search for universals of the relationship of language structure to language function. Some functionalist theories are more extensively supported by crosslinguistic data, notably Functional Grammar (Dik 1997) and Role and Reference Grammar (Van Valin and LaPolla 1997). These theories recognize the variation in grammatical structures across languages, but their frameworks generally focus on what is believed to be common to all languages (see §5).

Typology, on the other hand, is fundamentally comparative. A genuinely typological analysis of a grammatical construction, or a phonological pattern, or other aspects of language, examines the variation across a large number of languages. In this respect, typology resembles comparative historical linguistics. The goals of typology and comparative historical linguistics are very different, however, although the results of each are essential to the other (see §2). Comparative historical linguistics seeks genetic (family tree) relationships among languages, in order to discover the history of the languages and their speech communities (Joseph, this volume). Typology examines a broad sample of languages in order to discover universals of language structure and propose explanations of those language universals.

For this reason, typology is linked to language universals. For some linguists, typology simply means the description of variation, that is, how languages differ in their structure. For example, a simple descriptive typology of the word order of numeral and noun would divide the languages of the world into three broad types:

?Those in which numerals normally precede the noun they modify, as in English (Indo-European) two women;

?Those in which numerals normally follow the noun they modify, as in Ma’di (Nilo-Saharan, Uganda-Sudan) àg O@su@‘men four’;

?Those in which numerals may either precede or follow the noun they modify, as in Wardaman (Australian, Australia) guyaminyi mulurruwuyayi‘two old.women’ or marluga lege ‘old.man one’

However, typology in the linguistic sense is more than a classification of how languages differ in their structure. A descriptive typology leads to generalizations that constrain how much languages can vary; those generalizations are language universals. Several examples of language universals will be given in this chapter.

The search for language universals is shared by typology and generative grammar. However, the language universals derived from typological research are quite different from those derived in generative grammar, although the generative and typological approaches arose at around the same time. Although the belief in language universals has considerable modern currency, it is by no means a necessary fact or universally-held opinion, and in fact the opposite view was widely held in American linguistics until around 1960. To a considerable degree, the difference between the generative and typological approaches to language universals can be traced to the different traditions to which their respective founders, Noam Chomsky and Joseph Greenberg responded. The generative approach represents a reaction against behavioristic psychology, while the typological approach represents a reaction against anthropological relativism.

The behaviorist view of language, in particular language learning, is anti-universalist in that it posits no innate, universal internal mental abilities or schemas. In the behaviorist view, linguistic competence is acquired through learning of stimulus-response patterns. In contrast, the generative approach posits the existence of innate internal linguistic abilities and constraints that play a major role in the acquisition of language. It is these constraints that represent language universals in this approach. The argument used by Chomsky (e.g., Chomsky 1976) for the existence of innate universal linguistic competence refers to the ‘poverty of the stimulus’. It is argued that the child has an extremely limited input stimulus, that is, the utterances that it is exposed to from the mother and other caregivers. This stimulus is incapable of permitting the child to construct the grammar of the adult’s language in a classic behaviorist model; therefore, the child must bring innate universals of grammatical competence to bear on language acquisition. Hence the primary focus on universals in the generative tradition has been on their innate character.

The anthropological relativist view of language is that the languages of the world can vary arbitrarily: ‘languages could differ from each other without limit and in unpredictable ways’, in a famous quotation from the linguist Martin Joos (Joos 1957:96). This view of language was particularly strong among anthropological linguists studying North American Indian languages, which indeed differ radically in many ways from so-called Standard Average European languages. However, the comparison of one “exotic” language or a limited number of languages to English only indicates diversity, not the range of variation, let alone limits thereto. Greenberg and others discovered that a more systematic sampling of a substantial number of languages reveals not only the range of variation but constraints on that variation. Those constraints demonstrate that languages do not vary infinitely, and the constraints represent language universals. Hence the primary focus on universals in the typological tradition has been on their cross-linguistic validity, and on universals that restrict language variation (see §5).

The innate universals posited by generative grammar are intended to explain linguistic structure. The poverty of the stimulus argument is essentially a deductive

argument from first principles (although it does make assumptions about the nature of the empirical input, and what counts as relevant input). The poverty of the stimulus argument is one aspect of Chomsky’s more generally rationalist approach to language. The universals posited by typology are intended to represent inductive generalizations across languages, in keeping with typology’s empiricist approach to language. The generative grammarian argues that the discovery of innate principles that the child brings to bear in learning a single language can be extrapolated to language in general (Chomsky 1981). The typologist argues that a grammatical analysis based on one language or a small number of languages will not suffice to reveal language universals; only a systematic empirical survey can do so.

The typological approach to discovering language universals, like any empirical scientific approach, is basically inductive. In order to discover what language in general is like, or the universal character of language, one should look at a large number of languages. For example, consider the two English examples in (1)-(2):

(1) They talked about the war.

(2) What did they talk about?

The question in (2) differs from the statement in (1) in three ways: the interrogative pronoun corresponding to the war in (1) is found at the beginning of the question; the preposition about nevertheless remains “stranded” in its position after the verb; and the auxiliary verb did occurs, positioned before the subject. Looking only at English, one cannot tell what the significance of these three differences are. In fact, the initial position of the interrogative pronoun is extremely widespread across the world’s languages, though by no means universal. In contrast, the stranding of the preposition and the insertion of an auxiliary that is absent in the corresponding statement are extremely rare and idiosyncratic grammatical traits of English, and not causally connected to each other or to the initial position of the interrogative pronoun. It is only by examining a broad sample of languages that the significance of different properties of linguistic structure can be assessed.

Likewise, one can only judge whether a causal connection exists between two grammatical properties by examining a large and widely distributed sample of languages. For example, languages differ in the constructions used for nonverbal predication. English requires a copula(in boldface in (3)) for nonverbal predication at all times, whereas Russian lacks a copula in the present tense:

(3) She is a doctor.

(4) Ona vra?.

She doctor

A common explanation for the absence of a copula, or zero copula, in a variety of theories is that the reason for the occurrence of a copula is a “need” to place verbal inflections that cannot occur on nonverbal predicates such as the nouns in (3)-(4) (see Stassen 1997:66 for the history of this proposal, and also Baker 2003:40). Zero copulas

therefore are claimed to occur when verbs lack inflection or when the inflection is zero; nonzero inflections require a “dummy” copula to carry them. Thus the zero copula occurs in Russian present tense because that is the “unmarked” inflectional category.

This hypothesis appears to be a plausible one, assuming that the purpose of the copula is to carry verbal inflections for nonverbal predicates. It appears to be valid for English, Russian, and a number of other languages. However, Stassen demonstrates that in fact it is not crosslinguistically valid in general (Stassen 1997:65-76). There are many languages with overt inflections but a zero copula, such as Sinhalese (Indo-European, Sri Lanka; see the Appendix for abbreviations of grammatical elements in the examples):

(5)mahattea e-n?w-a

gentleman come-NPST-IND

‘The boss comes/will come.’

(6) mahattea a-aw-a

gentleman come-PST-IND

‘The boss came.’

(7) unn?hee hungak pr?sidd?kene-k

3SG.M very famous person-NOM

‘He is/was a very famous person.’

And there are many languages with (at least some) zero inflections but always an overt copula (translated as COP in example 9), such as Cambodian(Austroasiatic, Cambodia): (8) vì:?t?u phsa:r

he go market

‘He goes/went/will go to market.’

(9) m?n-s nùh cì:?kru:

man that COP teacher

‘That man is a teacher.’

Instead, the universal governing occurrence of a copula is the semantic type of predication: if predicate adjectives (predication of a property) requires a copula in a language, then predicate nominals (predication of object class) requires a copula as well (Croft 1991:130; Stassen 1997:127).

2. How many languages in typological study?

It is impossible to examine all of the approximately six thousand languages of the world (Comrie, this volume) in order to describe their typological variation and infer language universals. As with other sciences, a sample of languages must be taken, and the universals that are inferred are dependent on the quality of the sample. The standard approach to sampling is to ensure that the languages in the sample are drawn from as many different language families and different geographical regions as possible given the

size of the sample (anything from a dozen to several hundred languages). The reason for this is that for statistical purposes, the grammatical constructions in the different languages in the sample should be historically independent. For example, the fact that the numeral precedes the noun in both English and German is probably due to their descent from a common ancestor language (proto-Germanic), hence including both languages in a typology of word order is to be avoided.

However, a proper sample must be large enough to capture all of the diversity of human language. With a large sample, the likelihood increases that the typological traits of two or more languages in the sample are historically related, either by descent from a common ancestor or through language contact, recent or ancient. In fact, many linguists believe that all modern languages may be descended from a single common ancestor, even if the time depth and amount of change from that time means we can never construct a complete language family tree with a high degree of confidence. Thus it is possible that some typological traits have been a result of the form of Proto-World, or at least some very ancient protolanguage. For example, the indigenous languages of Papua New Guinea that do not belong to the Austronesian language family are almost entirely subject-object-verb (SOV) in word order. The island of Papua New Guinea was colonized at least 35,000 years ago if not earlier, and it is likely that the SOV word order of all the languages on Papua New Guinea are historically related through common ancestry or contact for at least 35,000 years. Some linguists have even suggested that SOV word order may have originated with Proto-World, though the evidence for this claim is fragmentary and circumstantial.

From a traditional statistical point of view, the fact that even distantly related languages may share typological traits through historical relations is problematic. There is an alternative to the sampling strategy, however, which is precisely to take historical relatedness into consideration when constructing and evaluating language universals. Dryer’s sampling method is the first in linguistics to do this (Dryer 1989). He does not discard any language from his sample, even if they closely related genetically or in the same geographical instead. Instead, he aggregates the data from closely related languages into genera(a genetic grouping of approximately the same time depth as a major subgroup of Indo-European such as Romance or Germanic), and then aggregates those results into six large linguistic areas in the world (Africa, Eurasia, Southeast Asia & Oceania, Australia & Papua New Guinea, North America and South America). For example, using this method, Dryer demonstrates that the hypothesized relationship between adjective-noun order and object-verb order is a consequence of a high preponderance of this correlation among genera in the Eurasian area, and is not an inherent causal connection between these two word orders (Dryer 1991).

More recently, Maslova and her colleagues have used a sophisticated mathematical model by taking pairs of closely related languages, inferring from the match or mismatch of typological traits in those pairs the likely rate of change of the typological trait, in order to determine what the stationary distribution of the typological traits are, and hence their inherent dominance or preference (Maslova 2000). For example, in an unpublished paper Maslova and Rakhilina demonstrate that the current distribution of alignment patterns between ergative and accusative (see §4) is not a stationary distribution: it

appears that a stationary distribution would imply a higher proportion of the accusative alignment pattern, and hence a higher dominance of the accusative pattern.

The best solution to the problem of historical relatedness of typological traits in crosslinguistic research is to use the linguistic family tree directly to model the evolution of typological traits through time and identify any causal relations between those traits. This method has not been applied to linguistic traits in published studies (but see unpublished word by Michael Dunn and Russell Gray), but it has been applied to cultural traits using language family trees. For example, Holden and Mace (2003) use the structure of the Bantu language family tree, derived from linguistic data using techniques from molecular phylogeny, to support a causal connection between the adoption of cattle and the loss of matrilineal descent patterns in prehistorical southern Africa. Pagel and Meade (2005) use a similarly constructed tree for Indo-European and argue that proto-Indo-European culture had monogamy and a dowry system, and daughter societies were first to polygyny and then to the absence of a dowry or presence of a bride-price (i.e. a shift to polygyny causes the abandonment of a dowry). The same methods can be applied to, for example, the relationship between object-verb order and genitive-noun order—two orders which are strongly though not completely correlated across languages—in various language families, in order to determine the causal connection between those orders and the directionality of causation.

These new techniques will allow us to use historical relations among languages to discover language universals rather than treating them as obstacles in inferring language universals. The techniques drawn from molecular phylogeny will have to be modified in order to incorporate historical relations through language contact as well as common ancestry. Finally, the integration of historical relations between languages in inferring language universals requires a shift to analyzing language structure as part of a dynamic evolving linguistic system over time, and language universals as universal constraints on the evolution of linguistic systems. This shift in approach, necessitated by methodological issues in constructing language samples, actually dovetails with the general shift in typological theory from universals of synchronic language systems to universals constraining language change (§6).

3. How does one person use data from so many languages?

A question that often comes to mind about typological research, especially outside the field of linguistics, is how can a single typologist or a small group of collaborators acquire the data from the large number of languages in a sample? It is impossible for a single linguist to know directly a hundred or a few hundred languages, or to consult with a similar number of native speaker consultants. For that reason, typological research is necessarily built on the foundations of sound documentation of the world’s languages by native speakers or by field linguists and their native speaker consultants (Munro, this volume). Many typologists have also done fieldwork in particular languages, language groups or language areas. The severe endangerment of the vast majority of languages in the world has long been of great concern to typologists.

Typologists have used a variety of resources to obtain the data for typological research. Perhaps the most important is a reference grammar of a language. A surprisingly large percentage of the languages of the world have reference grammars, though they vary substantially in breadth and depth of coverage and in quality. A reference grammar is quite different from a pedagogical grammar: it is designed not for learning a language, but as a reference source for the major grammatical constructions of the language. A reference grammar is organized around families of constructions (and also the sound structure and morphological structure of words in the language), although this organization varies from grammar to grammar. A reference grammar presupposes to a greater or lesser extent a knowledge of basic linguistic terminology and a knowledge of the language itself (for example, many reference grammars give examples only in the script of the language).

In order to use data from a language that one does not speak or has not studied in detail, a linguist must be able to analyze the structure and the meaning of phrases or sentences in the language. The meaning is generally provided by a translation of an example into English (or French or Spanish, or whatever is the language that the reference grammar is written in). The structure of the example is ideally provided by a separate line by the author of the reference grammar, sometimes referred to as the interlinear morpheme translation (IMT). Examples of IMTs can be seen in examples (4)-(9) above. An example of a sentence from Mokilese, an Austronesian language of Micronesia, with an IMT is given in (10).

(10) mine woaroa-n woal-o war

exist CLF-3SG man-that canoe

‘That man has a canoe.’

The last line, the gloss, gives the meaning of the Mokilese original sentence as a whole: from the gloss, we can see that this is an example of the predication of possession, to use the technical linguistic description of the function of the sentence. The middle line, the IMT, glosses each morpheme of the original, including affixes and other meaningful internal word changes, following relatively widely used conventions. The IMT therefore provides the structural analysis of the sentence: the order of elements (e.g., the verb comes first in the sentence); which elements are independent words and which are not (e.g. ‘that’ is a suffix on ‘man’); and the presence of special grammatical elements (e.g. the possessive classifier for the man’s canoe, and the person-number inflectional suffix on the classifier). The IMT also shows how differently the function of predication of possession is expressed in the language: in this case, a more literal translation of the Mokilese sentence would be ‘That man’s canoe exists’.

The presence of IMTs allows a linguist to rapidly recognize the grammatical structure of the language in the description even if the linguist has not previously studied the language. IMTs are used widely in contemporary reference grammars. Many grammars, especially older ones, do not use IMTs, and therefore a linguist must study the reference grammar (and a dictionary if available) in greater detail in order to analyze the structure of the constructions of interest in the language.

Reference grammars vary significantly in the constructions that they cover, and the depth in which they cover them. A typologist may discover that some (or many) of the reference grammars do not describe the construction s/he is interested in. One may need to accept that there will be gaps in the data in the sample (or one will replace the language in the sample with another language possessing a grammar with the relevant description). More recently, typologists have developed questionnaires to obtain data for particular constructions which are typically poorly described in reference grammars. One of the first questionnaires used a set of 200 sentence contexts to elicit tense-aspect constructions; the questionnaire was distributed to native speakers or specialists in 65 different languages (Dahl 1985). More recently, experimental elicitation techniques have been used to avoid the problem in questionnaires of translation from the language of the questionnaire. For example, a set of 71 pictures of different spatial scenes was used to elicit constructions for spatial relations in nine diverse languages (Levinson et al. 2003), and a set of 61 video clips of different cutting and breaking scenes was used to elicit different verbs of cutting and breaking in 28 languages (Majid et al. 2007).

Questionnaires and experimental elicitation techniques have the advantage of allowing a linguist to directly elicit the constructions expressing the function s/he is investigating. However, designing questionnaires and elicitation strategies is extremely difficult. Also, questionnaires and elicitation, while valuable in themselves, can benefit from a broader description of the language than just the constructions under investigation. Many times a typologist discovers an unexpected correlation of constructions. For example, one might not consider the English conditional construction in (11) and the topic construction in (12) to be grammatically related:

(11) If he comes, I will stay.

(12) (As for) me, I will stay.

But in a number of languages, including Hua, a Papuan language of New Guinea, the antecedent of a conditional and a topic are marked grammatically in the same way (in the case of Hua, with the suffix -ve; Haiman 1978:570-71):

(13) e-si-ve baigu-e

come-3SG.FUT-ve will.stay-1SG

‘If he comes, I will stay.’

(14) dgai-mo-ve baigu-e

I.EMPH-CONN-ve will.stay-1SG

‘(As for) me, I will stay.’

This grammatical connection is at first surprising, although an explanation is forthcoming: the situation described by the antecedent of a conditional provides the framework for evaluating the consequent that follows it, and the referent described by a topic phrase constitutes the framework for the following discourse (Haiman 1978:577-86). This grammatical and semantic connection would probably not have been detected if one constructed a questionnaire for conditional constructions; but it might be observed if one consulted reference grammars for a wide range of languages, and noticed the

similarity of form. Thus reference grammars continue to have great value for typological research.

4. How can one compare grammatical structures from many different languages?

A fundamental characteristic of the typological approach to language is that one begins by comparing a wide range of languages for the grammatical construction in question. The most important observation that comes from that process is the extraordinary diversity of grammatical structures that are found. For example, we noted above that English expresses the predication of possession with a transitive verb have as in That man has a canoe, but the Mokilese expression is literally ‘That man’s canoe exists’, with an intransitive verb ‘exist’. Other constructions for the predication of possession would translate literally as ‘A canoe is located at that man’, ‘That man is with a canoe’, ‘For the canoe exists that man’, and ‘As for that man, a canoe exists’ (Heine 1997:92). Each of these constructions has its own distinctive grammatical structure, and in addition to these major types there are a number of other less common types.

What is the basis for crosslinguistic comparison? The tremendous diversity of grammatical structures point to an answer that was offered in the seminal paper in typology, Greenberg (1966), and has been reiterated since: meaning or function. For example, in the study of possession, Heine compares whatever grammatical constructions are used in a language to express the function of predication of possession. Possession is what is traditionally described as a semantic relation: an ownership relation between a possessor (usually a person) and a possessum (usually an artifact). Predication is generally described as a pragmatic function, having to do with the packaging of information in a sentence: the possession relation is asserted, in contrast to attributive possession (as in that man’s canoe), in which the possessive relation is used to modify the description of the referent canoe.

The use of function as a basis for crosslinguistic comparison allows one to avoid problems arising from the usage of traditional grammatical terminology. For example, in English a contrast is made between relative clauses with finite(fully inflected) verb forms, as in (15), and participles, a nonfinite verb form, as in (16):

(15) the papaya that the ants ate

(16) the papaya eaten by the ants

A crosslinguistic study of “relative clauses” immediately encounters the situation that some languages such as Turkish (Altaic, Turkey) use participial or nominalized verb forms heavily, as in example (17) (Comrie 1989:142; see Keenan and Comrie 1977): (17) Hasan-?n Sinan-a ver-di?-i patates-i yedim

Hanan-GEN Sinan-DAT give-NR-his potato-ACC I.ate

‘I ate the potato that Hasan gave to Sinan.’

However, this is an artifact of the traditional grammatical terminology, which treats finite and nonfinite constructions completely differently. Keenan and Comrie define

relative clauses functionally, in terms of a proposition modifying a referent (the noun); using this definition, Turkish has constructions comparable to English relative clauses (and participles).

One widely held but invalid assumption about the crosslinguistic comparison of grammatical structures is that one can only compare grammatical structures by using the same grammatical categories across languages. Languages can vary to a remarkable degree in basic categories of grammar. For example, a plausible candidate for a pair of universal grammatical categories are the categories of subject and object of a verb:

(18) The woman didn’t run.

(19) The snake bit the man.

The sentence in (18) has only a single phrase (the woman) referring to a participant in the event denoted by the verb (run). Such a sentence is intransitive, and the woman is labeled the ‘subject’; we will refer to intransitive ‘subject’ with the label S. The transitive sentence in (19) on the other hand has two phrases referring to the two participants in the event (bit). It seems completely natural, indeed even necessary, that the first phrase, the snake (labeled A, mnemonic for ‘agent’) should belong to the same grammatical category as the woman in (18). Both the woman and the snake occur before the verb. Substitution of a pronoun for the woman would require the subject form she, not her. The grammatical category grouping S and A would be called ‘subject’. The second phrase in (19), the man (labeled P, mnemonic for ‘patient’) is grammatically different. It occurs after the verb, and substitution of a pronoun for the man in (19) would require the object form him, not he. The grammatical category consisting of P is generally called the ‘object’.

But many languages do not categorize the phrases referring to the participants in events in the same way. Compare the translations of (18) and (19) in Yuwaalaraay, an Aboriginal language of Australia:

(20) wa:l n1a ma yinar-? banaga-n1i

not that woman-ABS run-NFUT

‘The woman [S] didn’t run.’

(21) d1u yu-gu n1a ma d1a yn-? yi:-y

snake-ERG that man-ABS bit-NFUT

‘The snake [A] bit the man [P].’

Yuwaalaraay does not have subject and object in the English sense. The grammar of participants is expressed by case suffixes on the noun. In an intransitive sentence like (20), the phrase labeled S has no suffix (notated here with the zero symbol -?). In a transitive sentence like (21) however, what an English speaker would call the “subject”, A, has a case suffix -gu, which is called the ergative case (abbreviated ERG), and the “object” phrase P has no suffix, like the “subject” S in (20). In other words, whereas English categorizes both A and S together (as subject) and distinguishes P (as object), Yuwaalaraay categorizes P and S together (called the absolutive,abbreviated ABS) and distinguishes A (as the ergative).

This difference between English (and many other languages) on the one hand, and Yuwaalaraay (and many other languages) on the other, is very striking. It seems very unnatural to us to group together S and P against A—subject and object in the English sense seem to be such basic categories of grammar. Since the terms ‘subject’ and ‘object’ are so loaded with theoretical and traditional connotations, most typologists discard them in describing the contrast between languages like English and languages like Yuwaaalaraay, and instead use the terms nominative and accusative, from the Latin case terms, for the English categories. The crosslinguistic difference between English and Yuwaalaraay is called a difference in alignment.

The difference between English and Yuwaalaraay grammatical patterns here seems to make the two languages entirely different, so that no comparison, let alone universals of language, can be derived from the study of alignment systems. But this is not true. Crosslinguistic comparability of grammatical relations is based on the semantic roles, or more precisely prototype clusters of semantic roles, represented by S, A and P: one can compare how the agent of ‘bite’ and the single participant of ‘run’ are encoded grammatically across languages. More strikingly, there are language universals that can be stated no matter what the alignment system of the language is. For example, the absolutive is zero-coded in Yuwaalaraay and many other languages, in contrast to the overt coding of the ergative case. In languages with a nominative-accusative alignment and case inflections, the nominative is usually zero-coded in contrast to overt coding for the accusative. These are not the only types found: the universals for each alignment system can be more precisely formulated to cover all types, as in (22a-b):

(22) a. The accusative is encoded with at least as many morphemes as the nominative.

b. The ergative is encoded with at least as many morphemes as the absolutive.

The universals for the two alignment systems in (22a-b) have a single explanation. Noun phrases with nominative referents are more frequent in discourse than noun phrases with accusative referents, and noun phrases with absolutive referents are more frequent in discourse than noun phrases with ergative referents. A far-reaching universal encompassing (22a-b) and many other grammatical categories is: categories of meanings that are more frequent in discourse are likely to be encoded with fewer morphemes (Croft 2003; see §6). Hence it does not matter what the grammatical categories of a language are in order to find language universals. One must simply identify how concepts are encoded in a language. The language universals are based on how concepts are encoded, not a set of universal grammatical categories.

The methodological necessity of comparing constructions encoding the same functions across languages matches the functionalist orientation of most typologists. In order to discover language universals, a typologist compares how function is encoded in linguistic form. A crosslinguistic perspective does not allow a typologist to analyze form autonomously from its function. The very fact of crosslinguistic variation in the formal encoding of linguistic function, however, implies that linguistic form is separate from linguistic function, and that linguistic form is at least partly arbitrary—otherwise, all languages would have the same grammatical structure.

5. The nature of language universals

There is a widely assumed view of language universals that language universals are simply properties that are possessed by all human languages. All linguists would agree that there are certain very basic properties that are possessed by all languages. These properties include: utterances made up of discrete meaningful units; conventions of syntax; and duality of patterning (that is, organization of sound structure at a level largely independent of the organization of syntactic structure). These language universals are generally described as design features of language.

The more controversial question is over the existence and nature of universals that make reference to more specific grammatical entities. Some proposed universals of this type would include the hypothesis that all languages make a distinction between nouns and verbs, or that all languages have consonants and vowels.

Typological research leads to two general conclusions about language universals that are more specific reference to grammatical categories and structures. The first is that such universals are typically not in the form, “All languages have X”, that is, such universals are not unrestricted universals. Instead, almost all of the language universals that have been discovered are restricted or implicational universals, in the form “If a language has X, then it also has Y”.

Consider for example the relative orders of certain types of modifiers, in particular adjectives and numerals. In §1, we noted that in some languages, the numeral precedes the noun it modifies, and in others, it follows (and in still others, either order is possible). The same is true of the order of an adjective and the noun it modifies. When both modifiers are compared in a single language, the picture changes. In English both adjectives and numerals precede the noun:

(23) a. red book b. three books

Adj Noun Num Noun

This pattern is found in many languages. In many other languages, both adjectives and numerals follow the noun:

(24) Kosraean (Autronesian, Caroline Islands)

a. mwet kuh

b. mwet luo

men strong men two

Noun Adj Noun Num

A third group of languages has adjectives following the noun while numerals precede:

(25) Jamiltepec Mixtec (Mixtecan, Mexico)

a. ve@h e@lu!h lu

b. uvi ve@h e@

house little two house(s)

Noun Adj Num Noun

On the other hand, languages with the adjective preceding and numeral following are virtually unattested (although there are a few; the existence of exceptions will be discussed below).

The pattern of attested vs. unattested (or at least extremely rare) language types can be given in the four-cell table below:

Table 1. Attested vs unattested adjective and numeral word orders.

The generalization can itself be described in terms of an IMPLICATIONAL UNIVERSAL: (26) If a language has Adjective-Noun word order, then it (almost always) has

Numeral-Noun word order.

The discovery of implicational universals of word order by Greenberg (1966) demonstrated that there exist universal properties of language that do not require all languages to be identical in specific properties. The implicational universal in (26) is not by itself a description of a fact about the grammar of a particular language. In fact, one could not even identify the implicational universal without looking across a set of languages. The implicational universal captures a contingent relationship between Adjective-Noun order and Numeral-Noun order. Nevertheless, this contingent relationship must be a part of individual speakers’ knowledge of language structure and meaning. In particular, a language will not (or is extremely unlikely to) emerge or change to a type that has both noun-numeral order and adjective-noun order.

Hundreds of implicational universals have already been discovered, and more are discovered every time a typologist investigates a new area of grammar. The existence of so many implicational universals requires a rethinking of the nature of Universal Grammar, which is usually thought of as a set of unrestricted universals. The part of Universal Grammar that consists of unrestricted universals specifying ways in which all languages are identical captures only a very small portion of what is universal about language. It misses most of what is universal about language beyond the basic design features. The presence of large numbers of implicational universals requires a model

which allows for a great deal of variation in grammatical structure across languages, but constrains that variation to a significant degree in many different dimensions. This basic observation about language universals has not been addressed by most syntactic theories.

The second general conclusion about language universals that is revealed by typological research is that the constraints on language variation that are represented by implicational universals are not exceptionless in the way that the design features of language are. In the example of the relationship between numeral-noun order and adjective-noun order given above, we noted that the fourth language type, noun-numeral order and adjective-noun order, is not actually unattested: a small number of languages of this type do exist. This is almost always observed for language universals, especially with advent of larger and larger language samples.

This conclusion also changes how language universals must be understood. One cannot conceive of language universals (beyond the design features) as specifying what constitutes a possible human language. The noun-numeral & adjective-noun language type is not impossible; a few such languages exist. But it is far less frequent than the other three types. Moreover, the other language type with modifiers on the opposite side of the noun, adjective-noun and noun-numeral, while frequent, is not as frequent as the types in which both modifiers precede or both modifiers follow. These differences in the likelihood of language types are significant and must be explained by linguistic theory. In other words, typology shifts the scientific question about language universals from “What is a possible language type, and why?” to “What is a more probable language type, and why?”

For this reason, typologists have turned to more sophisticated quantitative methods in order to identify valid language universals. If all types of languages exist in the area of grammar under investigation, then one must be confident that differences in likelihood are statistically valid. The increase in quantitative sophistication in language sampling was discussed in §2. In the case of implicational universals, Maslova (2003) gives statistical tests for identifying valid implicational universals when one or more types in a table such as Table 1 is of much lower frequency than the other types.

An important type of model for inferring the language universals underlying generalizations such as the implicational relation in (26) is the competing motivations model. A competing motivations model posits two or more factors that determine language structure. However, the motivations typically do not determine a single grammatical pattern because they are often in conflict. In the case of conflict, there is no single optimal grammatical pattern that satisfies all of the competing motivations, and instead one finds cross-linguistic variation over several suboptimal patterns. In this way, universal properties of language (the motivations) give rise to cross-linguistic diversity.

For example, Greenberg proposed two competing motivations for implicational universals of word order. The first, dominance, can be thought of as simply a default preference for one order over another. For example, noun-adjective order (NA) is dominant, as is numeral-noun order (NumN). The second, harmony, can be thought of as

a dependent relation of one word order upon another. For example, AN order is harmonic with NumN order and NA order is harmonic with NNum order.

Greenberg’s two motivations compete with each other, and the result is described in the following principle:

(27) A dominant order may occur at any time, but a recessive order occurs only when a

harmonic order is also present.

The principle in (27) accounts for the distribution of languages in Table 1. The upper left cell is the language type with both dominant orders (NA and NumN), which are not harmonic with each other. The other two attested types have one recessive order, but the harmonic order is also present. The extremely rare type would have both recessive orders (AN and NNum), neither of which is dominant. That is, the extremely rare type is not motivated by either dominance or harmony, which accounts for its rarity. Finally, one cannot satisfy both motivations at once, since the dominant orders are not harmonic with each other.

A competing motivations model can be found by inspection with a simple case such as the two interacting word orders in Table 1. But it turns out that comparing the word orders of several different constructions across languages is much more complex: most possible types are attested, but at highly varying frequencies. Justeson and Stephens (1990) use a statistical technique, log-linear analysis, to examine the relationships between multiple word orders. Log-linear analysis allows one to construct a model of the simultaneous interactions between many word orders; the model that best fits the data provides the best model of which word orders actually might be causally connected. The best fit model for the word orders investigated by Justeson and Stephens identify the dominance and harmonic relations that are actually supported by the data in their 147-language sample. Reassuringly, Justeson and Stephens arrive at the same result that Dryer came to, namely that there is no direct causal relation between adjective-noun order and object-verb order.

Another example of the use of sophisticated statistical techniques in typology is found with an important recent development in modeling language universals, the semantic map model. The semantic map model allows the typologist to identify language universals without assuming that grammatical categories are the same across languages, as we observed in §4. There, it was pointed out that some languages divide the semantic roles in transitive and intransitive verbs (A, P and S) in a nominative-accusative pattern (A+S vs. P) while others divide them in an ergative-absolutive pattern (A vs. S+P). Still other languages use a tripartite pattern, distinguishing all three of A, S and P, while others have a neutral pattern, not distinguishing any of them. No language (or virtually no language) groups together A and S and distinguishes that group from P.

The range of variation and the limitation of attested types of grammatical relations can be represented by a conceptual space linking A to S and P to S, as in Figure 1:

S

A

P

Figure 1. Conceptual space for semantic roles.

The attested language types can be mapped as connected regions on this three-point space:

erg

abs

no

distinction

all

distinct

Figure 2. Map of attested systems of grammatical relations The unattested (or extremely rare) type of A+P vs. S cannot be mapped on the conceptual space in Figure 1: A cannot be grouped with P without also including S, according to the connections in Figure 1. Hence the conceptual space represents what is universal about the relationships among A, S and P, while allowing for the variation of attested language types illustrated by the semantic maps in Figure 2.

The semantic map model is a powerful tool for identifying language universals and separating language universals from the arbitrary aspects of crosslinguistic variation, and has been widely used. However, it is impractical for identifying the conceptual space when that space consists of many more points than the three exemplified in Figures 1-2, or when the range and frequency distribution of attested language types is complex. However, these problems can be solved by using multidimensional scaling and related multivariate techniques. For example, multidimensional scaling was applied to the results of the experimental elicitation for the 71 pictures of spatial relations described in §3, allowing typologists to identify the most significant semantic dimensions of spatial relations in determining attested systems of spatial relations (prepositions, postpositions and case inflection; Levinson et al. 2003; Croft and Poole 2008).

The richness, diversity and complexity of typological evidence are daunting to analyze. Typology has only recently begun to use more sophisticated quantitative tools to allow researchers to go beyond the easy to identify language universals to the universals that are harder to detect through the noise of arbitrary crosslinguistic variation. The initial successes in using such tools indicates that typologists will be able to find many more restricted universals of language.

6. Explanations for language universals

Most typologists seek functional explanations for language universals. This is chiefly because the basis of crosslinguistic comparison is how function is encoded in grammatical form. Nevertheless, there are many aspects of language function, and different aspects have been proposed to explain different kinds of language universals.

Proposed explanations for universals of word order (and also the order of affixes) fall into two general categories: language processing in production and comprehension, and diachronic explanations. Most models of word order universals include harmonic patterns, in which two or more word orders are correlated. The processing explanation is based on theories of how easy or difficult it is for speakers construct or parse utterances: put crudely, the word order combinations that facilitate parsing are more common crosslinguistically, and those that make parsing more difficult are less common (a detailed theory is presented in Hawkins (1994, 2004). A diachronic explanation of word order correlations is based on the fact that the actual grammatical constructions used for different word orders are historically related. For example, there is a very tight harmonic correlation between genitive-noun order and the order of adposition and noun: genitive-noun correlates with postpositions, and noun-genitive with prepositions (Greenberg 1966). The most likely explanation for this correlation is that adposition constructions are very frequently historically derived from genitive constructions via the process of grammaticalization (Greenberg 1969; Lehmann 1982; Bybee et al. 1994; Hopper and Traugott 2003). This can be observed in the history of English, where the prepositional phrase inside the house derives historically from the noun-genitive construction in the side of the house. Grammaticalization theory has uncovered a large number of universals of language change, specifically processes by which words in particular syntactic constructions evolve into grammatical elements.

The semantic map model also lends itself to a functional explanation for patterns of the expression of grammatical relations (see Figure 2 in §5), spatial relations and many other grammatical categories and constructions. The explanation is based on a universal conceptual space. The conceptual space represents the degree of conceptual relatedness of the situations or concepts represented by the points in the conceptual space. The structure of the conceptual space is hypothesized to represent general properties of human cognition and conceptualization. The language-specific categories represented by the semantic maps are partly arbitrary (hence the crosslinguistic variation), but they must conform to the constraints imposed by the structure of the conceptual space (Croft and Poole 2008).

Another widely used functional explanation appeals to competing motivations of economy and iconicity (Haiman 1983, 1985). A simple example of a language universals where economy and iconicity are involved is the expression of inflectional categories. In the category of nominal number, many languages express the singular form without any inflection (zero coding), while the plural is expressed with an overt inflection, as in English branch ~ branch-es. Other languages express both singular and plural with overt inflection such as the Zulu (Bantu, South Africa) prefixes in (28):

(28) a. umu-ntu b. aba-ntu

SG-person PL-person

Other languages, such as Lahu (Sino-Tibetan, Burma) in (29), make no distinction, or to put it another way, express both the concepts of singular and plural without any overt inflection:

(29) qha$/‘village/villages’

However, very few languages express the plural without an overt inflection and the singular with an overt inflection. (In the case of languages that do, the plural is designated a collective and the singular is a special singulative form, and indeed this pattern is typically associated with nouns for objects occurring in groups.) The typological pattern can again be described in terms of a table (Table 2) and an implicational universal:

Table 2. Attested and unattested singular and plural inflectional types.

(30) If a language uses an overt inflection for the singular, then it also uses an overt

inflection for the plural.

The variation allowed by the implicational universal in (30) can be accounted for by economy and iconicity. Economic motivation is characterized in processing terms: the more frequently occurring form is expressed by fewer morphemes. The singular is more frequent than the plural in discourse for the vast majority of noun referents, so it may be expressed without an inflection, as in English. Iconic motivation is characterized by the relationship between form and function: it favors a one-to-one mapping between form and function. So if the category of number is expressed in a language, iconicity motivates expression of all values of the category, as in Zulu. (Alternatively, the category may not be expressed at all, as in Lahu.)

Economic motivation is extremely common crosslinguistically: many universals of grammatical inflection are explainable in terms of frequency differences, and economy is increasingly being invoked to explain universals of syntactic constructions as well (Bybee 2006). Iconic motivation is also extremely common. In fact, iconicity is often taken for granted. For example, the fact that referents and their modifying properties are syntactically constituents (e.g., in Two boys ate five pizzas the number of boys is two, not five) is basically assumed, but it represents the iconic motivation that conceptual relations support syntactic constituency. Also, most syntactic theories contain principles specifying that the syntactic arguments of a verb must match the semantic participants in the event denoted by the verb in number and type; this is also an iconic principle. Economy and iconicity frequently are in competition, leading to the crosslinguistic variation of the type observed in Table 2.

The competition between processing mechanisms of different kinds and the different types of conceptual relations holding among components of the situation expressed by a grammatical construction leads naturally to a dynamic model of language and language universals. Many typologists have proposed evolutionary models of how language structures adapt to the functions they perform in communication and the constraints on comprehension and production of utterances in language use (e.g. Greenberg 1979; Croft 2000, 2003; Givón 2002). In an evolutionary approach, a linguistic system is conceptualized as a stage in the process of language change, which can shift by the choices of speakers. Language universals are the result of universal cognitive and social interactional forces that shape speakers’ choices at all timescales, from the immediate discourse situation to the lifetime of a speaker to the transmission of language across generations. The evolutionary approach to grammar emerging from typology its integration with related approaches, including sociolinguistics (Coulmas, this volume) and the usage-based model (Bybee 2006), promises a major step forward in our understanding of language.

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什么是语言类型学

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评语言共性论中的几种不同的观点——来自学习理论的证据

评语言共性论中的几种不同的观点 ——来自学习理论的证据Ξ 方　立 程　工 Abstract　T h is article begin s w ith a b rief review of th ree m aj o r typ es of un iversal2 ist view on language:con servative,m ild,and radical.It then p resen ts an in troducti on to fo rm al learn ing theo ry,concen trating m ain ly on its basic assum p ti on s.It finally show s that the theo rem s w h ich are derivab le from the basic assum p ti on s are in strong suppo rt of radical un iversalis m. 1.0语言与语言之间的关系是什么?它们在本质上是彼此不同还是有共同的规律?如果它们有共性可言,那么共性的程度有多大?这些问题一直是人们关心的话题,也是哲学家和语言学家们争议的焦点之一。在此,我们可以先把这个问题上的观点区分为对立的两类:个性论和共性论,两者对语言中存不存在共同规律这个问题的答案分别是无和有。在现代语言学中,个性论已经逐渐消沉,几乎销声匿迹。语言共性论则为大多数学者所接受,成为一种共识。这点F rom k in和Rodm an(1983:15)说得很清楚:“因为在所有语言的语法中发现了一些共同的、普遍的特征,所以大多数现代语言学家都属于共性论者。”然而,在语言间关系问题上的争论并没有就此平息,相反却有愈演愈烈的趋势,甚至变成为不同流派之间重要的区别性特征之一。①争论的中心在于语言受普遍规律支配的范围与程度有多大。②为了叙述的方便,我们把共性论进一步粗略地划分为三种有代表性的立场和观点: 1.1第一种可以称为“保守的共性观”。持这一观点的人认为语言中虽有共性的存在,但数量不多,作用范围有限。在事实分析中他们也不注重对普遍规律的提取,而把主要精力放在对各种语言逐个地描述上。 第二种可以称为“温和的共性观”。持此观点的人认为语言共性是存在的,甚至是大量存在的。但这种共性是以某种趋势而不是以原则的形式出现的。趋势在各个语言中的体现可有深浅之别。从某种意义上讲,贯穿于所有语言的、不变的原则是没有的。 第三种可以称为“激进的共性观”。持此观点的人认为所有语言都受一些普遍原则的制约,语言间的差异在这些普遍原则所允许的范围内存在。因此,可以说,语言的共性是本质性的,核心性的,而个性则是非本质性的,边缘性的。 1.2保守的共性观是美国结构主义者中普遍流行的一种思潮。在一方面,他们并不否 Ξ我们感谢北京语言文化大学和解放军外国语学院为我们提供了这次合作研究的机会。

英汉语言、思维的共性和个性考辨

英汉语言、思维的共性和个性考辨 [摘要] 语言的共性和个性问题，一直是语言学界研究的焦点问题之一。有的学者致力于寻找语言的共性，有的则强调语言的差异。英语和汉语在世界上应用广泛，对两者的共性和个性研究尤其值得重视。本文认为，英汉语既有共性也有个性。思维决定语言，因此语言的共性源于思维的共性，语言的个性源于思维的个性。语言的共性建立在语言的个性基础之上，鉴于汉语研究的状况，目前我们应加强汉语个性的研究。 [关键词] 英汉语言共性; 英汉语言个性; 思维共性; 思维个性; 汉语个性研究 关于语言的共性和个性问题，也即普遍性和特殊性问题，包括汉语和英语的异同问题，在语言学界长久以来存在着两派对立的观点或对立的研究思路。一派孜孜以求语言的普遍性或共性，以美国乔姆斯基的生成语法为代表，力求找出语言的普遍规则，这一点遭到不少学者的质疑，他们致力于研究二者的不同，强调语言的民族性。近一段时间以来，随着信息技术的发展，又有一些国内学者热衷于寻找语言之间的普遍性，比照英语研究的一些“普遍性”，汉语研究积极向其靠拢。那么我们究竟该如何看待英汉语的异同？导致二者异同的深层原因是什么？本文首先对求同和求异两派观点做一概述，然后从思维的角度探究英汉语的共性和个性问题。 一、语言的共性和个性 （一）语言的共性研究 目前关于语言共性问题，有两条代表性的研究思路。一条是以美国乔姆斯基(Chomsky)为代表的生成语法，主张通过对一种语言做深入的研究找出蕴含在语言中的普遍“参数”。普遍语法假说为其整个理论的基石。普遍语法认为，在人类成员的心智/大脑中，存在着由生物遗传而天赋决定的认知机制系统。Chomsky把这些认知系统称为心智器官。决定构成人类语言知识的是其中的一个系统，他称之为语言机能(language faculty)。这种研究思路，将语言从本质上定义为心智实体，它是对实在于大脑中的语言心智机能抽象地研究和刻画，最终是对大脑机能的研究和刻画，所以生成语法走的是自然科学的研究路子[1]。1957年他的第一部专著《句法结构》出版，标志着这种学说的诞生。最先起来响应的有语音学家M.哈利，语义学家J.卡茨，句法学家P.波斯塔尔，心理学家J.A.福多等。这个以美国麻省理工学院为中心的学派，在几年内就一跃而成为国际语言学界的重要流派，引发了语言学界的革命，至今仍然在语言学界占有非常重要的地位。乔姆斯基1965年建立起一个完整的生成语法系统，包括语类、转换、音系、语义4个子系统，各子系统之间有一定的顺序关系。每个子系统都有一套规则，规则之间有一定的使用顺序，像用数学公式一样，逐步推导出句子来，不同的规则推导出不同的句子。这样，生成语法系统好比一部机械装置，运转起来能够生成某种语言中的一切合格的句子，而且只能生成那些合格的句子。经过半个世纪的发展，生成语法的发展经历了初期理论、标准理论及其扩展条件理论、原则参数研究方式，一直到最近的最简方案，不断发展，甚至完全推翻了一些过去的理论。 另一派以格林伯格（Greenberg）为代表的语言类型学研究思路。他们从研究多种语言出发，主要采用归纳的方法来发现语言的共性。语言类型学的特征在于“数据-统计-抽象-演绎”的研究方法范式。具体来说，语言类型学是通过跨语言比较，通过大量的语言考察、统计和对比，观察存在于这些语言背后的起制约作用的普遍性因素。这些普遍性因素造就了人类语言多姿多彩的表现形式，通过这些普遍性因素我们可以解释为什么某些语言形式是可以接受的，而另一些语言形式却不能被接受。虽然生成语言学和语言类型学研究思路不同，但在“语言的共性主义”这一点上，二者是一致的，甚至在把语言的最终解释归入生物方面这一点上，他们具有更高目标的一致性。 以上介绍的语言共性说曾经遭到很多学者的反对，但近年来关注普遍语法，语言普遍性似乎又开始热起来了，出版了一些有关语言共性的论文和专著，如程工的《语言共性论》，从生

语言类型学

语言类型学 一，语言学流派大体上分成两类：形式学派和功能学派。这两派都是为了寻找语言的本质。 但是语言类型学并不关心语言的本质究竟是什么(或者说是以另外一种方式关心)，这一流派以研究方法和研究观念而区别于传统的两大阵营。当然，在语言类型学中，也有的学者偏形式，也有的学者片功能，用刘老师的话说就是：这里没有分界，只有程度。现在比较热门的方向是词类类型学。 二，形式语法跟语言类型学基本是正好相对的(这和那台湾老师的说法一样)。形式语言学是从一种语言出发，向纵深挖掘，找出人类语言的深层结构，这是演绎式的。类型学是从很多种语言中找出共同点来，从而探索到人类语言的共同形式，这是归纳式的。 两者的区别就是：前者认定每一种语言都是深层结构的分支，从一种逆流向上总能找到源头。后者认为每一种语言都是深层结构的一个表现，通过大范围整理语料，可以消除不同之处，找到原初的语言形式。 三，形式学派是test，即告诉人们什么是“不可说”，未作规定的便合法（这就和法理上的原则是一样的） 功能学派是text，即重视篇章、语用这些东西，“这世上没有语法，只有语法化”。 类型学派是attest，探讨某几种语言的共性和变异限度，看语言中是否有某种结构。 四，双宾语结构可以作为非常好的测试样本，各种语言中的双宾语有很大不同，不但表现了语法规则，还代表了语用、篇章知识在语法化过程中的痕迹。我们要考察的是：这一意义是怎么表达的？近宾语和远宾语的结构是怎样的？是否被介词隔开了？ 语言类型学 语言类型学有广狭松严不同的种种含义，但都离不开一个“跨”字，即它必须有一种跨语言（及跨方言、跨时代）的研究视角，才能称为类型学研究。而严格意义上的类型学，是具有自己研究范式的“语言共性与语言类型研究”。 从当代语言学的学术构成看，语言类型学既是语言学的一种分支，也是语言学的一种学派。 说它是分支，因为它和其他研究领域构成了某种分工：承担了跨语言比较和在比较中总结人类语言共性的任务，从而与注重语言结构内部深入研究的工作形成学科上的一种互补合作。

语言的四大类型

语言类型学分类范本 1.分析语，孤立语（易和孤立语言混淆，建议少用），词根语 2.综合语，屈折语（不称曲折语） 3.黏着语（不称胶着语） 4.抱合语（多式综合语）编插语复综语多式综合语等等 ①越南语、苗语、华语是典型的分析语文法的词根语类型 ②拉丁语、梵语、俄语是典型的综合语文法的屈折语类型 ③蒙古语、韩语、日语是典型的综合语文法的黏着语类型 ④因纽特语(爱斯基摩)是典型的综合语文法的抱合语类型

分析语>> 又称孤立语（注意，“孤立语言”并不等同于“孤立语”，前者指的是与任何其它的语言不存在亲属关系的语言。为了避免混淆，下文会采用“分析语”来称呼后者）或词根语，这类语言的特点在于其一般不是通过词形变化（即词的内部形态变化，又称作屈折变化）来表达语法的作用，而是通过独立的虚词和固定的词序来表达语法意义，而且一般而言，分析语缺乏多数的格变化。 特征： 1、没有丰富的形态变化，词本身显示与别的词的关系。 2、既无内部屈折也无外部屈折，靠语序和虚词。 3、一种语法手段可表多种语法意义，一种语法意义可用多种语法手段表示。 4、没有词尾语素。 由来： 汉语的发展过程是由综合语发展到分析语。我们试用构词方法来看，古汉语大都是单字词（除了少数联绵词外），例如，查查从“马”字部的汉字，可发现各类“青马”、“黄马”、“白马”……等等不同类属的马，古时都是用具综合语特色的单字词表达： 骠：黄毛白点马 骢：青白马 骓：青白杂色马 骐：青黑格子纹马 骥：好马 骏：好马 骕：一种良马 駃：另一种骏马 。 。 。 语言特点 具综合语特色的古汉语单字词占版面的空间的确是少很多，但如果要全记得并纯熟应用这些单字词，难度会比学习具分析语特色的多字词高很多，而且汉字/词的数量也会无止境的增

语言类型学与汉语的SVO和SOV之争

【原文出处】天津师大学报：社科版 【原刊期号】199602 【原刊页号】75-80 【分类号】H1 【分类名】语言文字学 【作者】曹聪孙 【复印期号】199608 【标题】语言类型学与汉语的SVO和SOV之争 【正文】 描写语言学（结构主义）的理论贡献之一就是对语言的结构进行了详尽的、穷极的分类和描写。经过检 验，它对词的形态、词的顺序及其组合作出了令人信服的合理解释。语法学中的线性结构分析与层次的认定 就建立在这一描写的基础之上。描写——结构的理论把语言研究推向了言语的解剖台。 被人们称之为描写语言学的反动的转换——生成语言学（或乔姆斯基理论）有它自己的种种特点。但无 法否认的是，它仍然以结构主义的方法所形成的语言诸要素、诸成分、诸单位作为操作对象并将其进一步抽 象化和符号化。 语言类型学的理论及其对现代汉语研究的影响 美国的Joseph H. Greenberg是当代描写语言学派中的重要学者。他的有关人类语言共性的研究蜚声语言 学界。尤其令人瞩目的是，他的分析语言类型学的重要论文《某些主要跟语序有关的语法普遍现象》〔1〕将 人类诸语言的基本语序类型作了分类。从逻辑分析出发，他把绝大多数语言的语序整理归纳为6种可能出现 的类型。这6种语序是： ①SOV（主·宾·谓）②SVO（主·谓·宾）③VSO（谓·主·宾） ④VOS（谓·宾·主）⑤OVS（宾·谓·主）⑥OSV（宾·主·谓） 不同语言之间的差异是很大的。可是，在对不同语言间的差异进行的研究中却能够导出对语言共性的研 究。每种语言中的词在进入句子之前，仅仅是一个语言单位，而在进入言语之后，则同时还是一个句子成分 。句中的语言单位不再是词的随意排列而是有规则、有顺序的组合。线性句子的产生实际上就是说话人（或 写作者）对词（成分）的排序行为。 SVO这三种句子成分的不同排列产生出6种句子类型。世界上多数语言的语序，都不外这几种类型。英语 、泰语的名词宾语放在动词后面，并使用前置词。所以，它们是SVO型的语言。日语、土耳其语的宾语放在 动词前面，并使用后置词，所以，它们是SOV型。 除了句子这三种主要成分的语序之外，语言类型学还提出了另外的几个参数或标度。〔2〕

语言类型学的眼光

域的语言文字标准。信息领域的语言文字标准具有工业标准性质,促进了制标手段的现代化,特别是在 民间首倡、政府颁布 转变到 政府为主之后,又开始出现 企业为主、国际合作 的制标新体制。 时代日行千里,新的语言生活领域不断出现,一些领域对语言文字标准会有新需求。比如,汉语国际传播需要建立语言文字标准、语言文字教学标准和相关的工作标准;计算机屏幕的书面语显示,需要有新的标点符号、行款格式标准;信息时代的小学识字教学,需要有合适的小学信息教育软件和支持识字教学的软件;需要研究中西文混排、汉语与民族语混排等的技术标准;等等。语言文字标准的制定应有战略性思考,在机制、体制等方面要有新举措,特别需要认识新形势,研究新问题,理念更新,思想解放,开拓语言文字标准建设的新局面。 [附注] !见?说文解字#序?。 %1981年5月停用。 &1987年5月,在山东泰安举行的全国第三次手语工作会议,确定将?聋哑人通用手语图?易名为?中国手语?。1994年出版?中国手语?(续集)。 2003年5月,?中国手语?再次修订出版。 [参考文献] [1]费锦昌.中国语文现代化百年记事(1892~ 1995)[Z].北京:语文出版社,1997. [2]李宇明.搭建中华字符集大平台[J].中文信息 学报,2003,(2). [3]李宇明.信息时代的语言文字标准化工作[J]. 语言文字应用,2009,(2). [4]厉兵.汉字字形研究[M].北京:商务印书 馆,2004. [5]王均.当代中国的文字改革[M].北京:当代 中国出版社,1995. [6]清末文字改革文集[C].北京:文字改革出版 社,1958. 语言类型学的眼光 沈家煊 (中国社会科学院语言研究所) 格林伯格(J.H.Greenberg)是当代语言类型学的开创者和代表人物,他在1966年撰写的 语法的某些共性:论有意义成分的序次 (Some universals of gram mar with particular reference to the order of meaningful elements)一文已成为这一领域的经典论文。语言类型和语言共性其实是同一件事情的两个方面,这可以从两个角度来理解。类型学是通过比较从结构特点上对语言进行分类,然而比较得有一个共同的基础,比如,要比较各种语言名词短语的结构,前提是承认每种语言都有名词,这个前提就是语言的共性。另一个角度的理解是,世界上的语言看上去千变万化,无一定宗,其实不然,语言之间的变异要受一定的限制,有一定的变化 模式 ,有些变异不可能出现,这叫做 万变不离其宗 。这种普遍适用的变异模式也是一种共性。因此,语言的类型研究和共性研究只是侧重面不同而已:类型学主要关心语言有哪些种不同的变化类型,共性研究主要关心语言类型的变化有哪些限制。 研究语言的共性也就是要回答 什么是可能有的人类语言 这个问题。要回答这个问题现在大致有两条路子,一条是以乔姆斯基为代表的生成语法理论,它主张对一种语言用推演法找出语 # 11 # 2009年第3期纪念新中国成立60周年笔谈

语言类型学与汉语研究

语言类型学与汉语研究

语言类型学与汉语研究 语言类型学是当代语言学的一门“显学”，但目前还不能说已是汉语语言学中的“显学”。单从语言学理念来看，类型学应当比形式学派甚至功能学派更具有与汉语语言学的亲和力。形式学派从语法能力的先天性假说出发，通过假设、演绎和母语者的语感测试来寻求生与俱来的普遍语法。功能学派则抱有与之对立的基本信念，认为语言之所以如此是因为要满足交际或认知功能的需要，于是以此为出发点，致力从语言的使用或理解规则中去解释语言的结构及其演变。两者不同程度地带有从假设出发、“主题先行”的特点。语言类型学则更多保留了语言学作为一门经验性学科的特性，注重材料、讲究实证、主张旁征博引、提倡归纳推理，力求以事实说话，在调查之前不假设任何东西。这本是最容易为中国的语言学家认可的研究方法。然而事实上，在形式、功能、类型三大当代“显学”中，偏偏是类型学在中国国内最少为人了解。怪也不怪，这与中国学术界的另一些“国情”有深刻的关系。中国的传统学术包括语言文字之学，素有尊夏贬

夷、厚古薄今、重文轻语的传统。虽然华夏-汉民族数千年来就在众多民族部族的大交融中产生发展，中国也一直是一个多民族的大家庭，但在汗牛充栋的传统中文典籍中，我们几乎看不到对汉语以外语言文字的记述，更遑论研究了。不要说非汉族语言，即使是各地的方言，除了作为“匡谬正俗”的对象偶尔一现，也很难引起历朝历代学者们的关注。也就是说，正统的学术向来缺少对异族语言的兴趣，更没有进行语言比较的传统。进入现代以来，外语、方言和少数民族语言研究都获得了强大了推动力，这本是孕育跨语言比较的很好时机。可是，50年代过于追求专业分工的前苏联式教育科研体系，以及语言研究队伍和学术兴趣向普通话的高度集中，又强化固化了不同语种研究队伍间的壁垒，形成了纯粹语种导向的语言研究体系。不要说汉语、外语和少数民族语言三大队伍很少有切实的交流，即使在古今汉语之间、普通话和方言之间也缺少实质性的沟通，更谈不上在跨语言基础上对语言共性的追求了。这种学术格局下，结构主义、功能主义、甚至生成语法都有一定的机会被引进过来成为汉语研究的利器，甚至发展成主流，唯独语言类

语言类型学与汉语的SVO和SOV之争

【标题】语言类型学与汉语的SVO和SOV之争 【正文】 描写语言学（结构主义）的理论贡献之一就是对语言的结构进行了详尽的、穷极的分类和描写。经过检 验，它对词的形态、词的顺序及其组合作出了令人信服的合理解释。语法学中的线性结构分析与层次的认定 就建立在这一描写的基础之上。描写——结构的理论把语言研究推向了言语的解剖台。 被人们称之为描写语言学的反动的转换——生成语言学（或乔姆斯基理论）有它自己的种种特点。但无 法否认的是，它仍然以结构主义的方法所形成的语言诸要素、诸成分、诸单位作为操作对象并将其进一步抽 象化和符号化。 语言类型学的理论及其对现代汉语研究的影响 美国的Joseph H. Greenberg是当代描写语言学派中的重要学者。他的有关人类语言共性的研究蜚声语言 学界。尤其令人瞩目的是，他的分析语言类型学的重要论文《某些主要跟语序有关的语法普遍现象》〔1〕将 人类诸语言的基本语序类型作了分类。从逻辑分析出发，他把绝大多数语言的语序整理归纳为6种可能出现 的类型。这6种语序是： ①SOV（主·宾·谓）②SVO（主·谓·宾）③VSO（谓·主·宾） ④VOS（谓·宾·主）⑤OVS（宾·谓·主）⑥OSV（宾·主·谓） 不同语言之间的差异是很大的。可是，在对不同语言间的差异进行的研究中却能够导出对语言共性的研 究。每种语言中的词在进入句子之前，仅仅是一个语言单位，而在进入言语之后，则同时还是一个句子成分 。句中的语言单位不再是词的随意排列而是有规则、有顺序的组合。线性句子的产生实际上就是说话人（或 写作者）对词（成分）的排序行为。 SVO这三种句子成分的不同排列产生出6种句子类型。世界上多数语言的语序，都不外这几种类型。英语 、泰语的名词宾语放在动词后面，并使用前置词。所以，它们是SVO型的语言。日语、土耳其语的宾语放在 动词前面，并使用后置词，所以，它们是SOV型。 除了句子这三种主要成分的语序之外，语言类型学还提出了另外的几个参数或标度。〔2〕 ①VSO/Pr/NG/NA ②SVO/Pr/NG/NA ③SOV/Po/GN/AN ④SOV/Po/GN/NA 这些符号的意思是：Pr＝前置的地位词；Po＝后置的地位词；N ＝中心名词；G＝所有者；A＝形容词。 这就成为：

语言类型学与汉语的SVO和SOV之争(曹聪孙)

语言类型学与汉语的SVO和SOV之争(曹聪孙) 2010-09-26 10:55:22| 分类：汉语语法|字号大中小订阅 【原文出处】天津师大学报：社科版 【原刊期号】199602 【原刊页号】75-80 【分类号】H1 【分类名】语言文字学 【作者】曹聪孙 【复印期号】199608 【标题】语言类型学与汉语的SVO和SOV之争 【正文】 描写语言学（结构主义）的理论贡献之一就是对语言的结构进行了详尽的、穷极的分类和描写。经过检 验，它对词的形态、词的顺序及其组合作出了令人信服的合理解释。语法学中的线性结构分析与层次的认定 就建立在这一描写的基础之上。描写——结构的理论把语言研究推向了言语的解剖台。 被人们称之为描写语言学的反动的转换——生成语言学（或乔姆斯基理论）有它自己的种种特点。但无 法否认的是，它仍然以结构主义的方法所形成的语言诸要素、诸成分、诸单位作为操作对象并将其进一步抽 象化和符号化。 语言类型学的理论及其对现代汉语研究的影响 美国的Joseph H. Greenberg是当代描写语言学派中的重要学者。他的有关人类语言共性的研究蜚声语言 学界。尤其令人瞩目的是，他的分析语言类型学的重要论文《某些主要跟语序有关的语法普

遍现象》〔1〕将 人类诸语言的基本语序类型作了分类。从逻辑分析出发，他把绝大多数语言的语序整理归纳为6种可能出现 的类型。这6种语序是： ①SOV（主·宾·谓）②SVO（主·谓·宾）③VSO（谓·主·宾） ④VOS（谓·宾·主）⑤OVS（宾·谓·主）⑥OSV（宾·主·谓） 不同语言之间的差异是很大的。可是，在对不同语言间的差异进行的研究中却能够导出对语言共性的研 究。每种语言中的词在进入句子之前，仅仅是一个语言单位，而在进入言语之后，则同时还是一个句子成分 。句中的语言单位不再是词的随意排列而是有规则、有顺序的组合。线性句子的产生实际上就是说话人（或 写作者）对词（成分）的排序行为。 SVO这三种句子成分的不同排列产生出6种句子类型。世界上多数语言的语序，都不外这几种类型。英语 、泰语的名词宾语放在动词后面，并使用前置词。所以，它们是SVO型的语言。日语、土耳其语的宾语放在 动词前面，并使用后置词，所以，它们是SOV型。 除了句子这三种主要成分的语序之外，语言类型学还提出了另外的几个参数或标度。〔2〕 ①VSO/Pr/NG/NA ②SVO/Pr/NG/NA ③SOV/Po/GN/AN ④SOV/Po/GN/NA 这些符号的意思是：Pr＝前置的地位词；Po＝后置的地位词；N ＝中心名词；G＝所有者；A＝形容词。 这就成为： ①谓·主·宾/前置词/中心名词·所有者/中心名词·形容词

浅析语言和言语的联系

浅析语言和言语的联系 发表时间：2017-09-30T16:02:48.727Z 来源：《知识－力量》2017年8月中作者：董涛[导读] 本文主要从索绪尔的理论出发浅析语言学的研究对象：语言和言语之间的关系。 （黑龙江大学东语学院，黑龙江哈尔滨 150000）摘要：语言学是一门科学，它有客观的研究对象，有自己的研究方法，有系统的科学理论并可以得到证实。本文主要从索绪尔的理论出发浅析语言学的研究对象：语言和言语之间的关系。 关键词：语言、言语、语言学 费尔迪南·德·索绪尔(1857—1913)是20世纪最著名的语言学家，现代语言学的奠基人。他首次将语言学的研究对象——语言、言语进行了区分，使得语言学研究更加明确。语言不能仅理解为交流的工具，它是一个极其复杂的现象，存在于现实世界的方方面面，对人类发展有着非常重要的作用，研究语言使其更好地发挥作用也成了当下科学研究的重点。语言学是能够直接推动社会生产力发展的科学[1]4，但又作为当代科学体系的瓶颈科学，对语言学的研究显得尤为迫切。 1.语言和言语的意义 什么是语言？索绪尔在《普通语言学教程》中将人的言语活动（langage）分为语言（langue）和言语（parloe）两部分。但他并没有对语言给一个直接、明确的概念，他认为语言是言语活动的一个确定且重要的部分，在社会发展过程中产生，承担社会集团的特定社会功能，是“一整套必不可少的规约[2]30”。也就是认为，语言是言语活动的主要内容，它是社会集团中的成员为了更好地行使言语机能而自行制定和采用的规则。例如，汉语、英语、日语，它们有着各自不同的文字体系和文法体系，而这些文字使用和文法规则则是当地集团内部为了交流而创作的一套体系，带有明显的地域特色。所以，语言可以简单地理解为：语言=词汇+语法索绪尔在解释言语时认为言语表达的是个人的意志，是一种个人行为。认为说话者使用语言规则表达个人思想，言语是这一系列行为思想的组合，同时承担供组合得以表达的平台的作用，“心理·物理机构[2]35”。现在的大多数语言学著作中则将其表述为“把说话中的发音过程和所说出的话叫做言语，其中发音过程叫作言语动作，所说出来的话叫作言语产品[3]12”即，言语=言语动作+言语产品。我们说出的有明确意义的话，短到一个句子、长到几小时的演讲、发表的文章等都属于言语范畴。其中，句子是言语的最小单位。 2.语言、言语之间的联系 言语活动（langage）包括语言（langue）和言语（parloe）两部分，语言和言语是相互联系、相互区别的，是共性和个性之间的关系。马克思唯物主义辩证法认为，共性寓于个性之中，个性受共性的制约，没有离开共性的个性，也没有离开个性的共性。语言是从集团内部所有成员的言语中概括出来的，是共性的东西，集团成员每个人不同的言语则是个性的东西。一个不懂英语的外国人只身待在英国，因为语言不通却又想理解对方的语言，他肯定是从研究英国人的言语活动入手，从而归纳出英语的语言特点到底是什么。言语是语言的基础，人们通过发现、整理、研究具体群体的个人言语现象，从个别的言语材料中归纳出整个群体的言语共性特征，进而上升到语言的概念或范围[4]。 索绪尔在《普通语言学教程》中阐明，语言和言语有着密切关系，二者都以对方的存在为前提，联系十分紧密。“要言语为人所理解，并产生它的一切效果，必须有语言，但是要使语言能够建立，也必须有言语。”我们说出的话和表达的思想要被人理解、认可，就必须说别人听得懂的“语言”。这种“语言”不是任意的，是从社会集团成员的个人言语中经过千万年的演变中确定下来的。但也不能说语言是一成不变的，它也随着社会的发展不断地抛弃和吸收新的内容。由此可见，二者相互影响，互为条件。语言是工具，言语是工具运用的结果，工具在运用中产生且存在与工具运用中。但他们又是两种迥然不同的东西。 3.语言和言语的区别 个性和共性虽然相互联系，却又相互区别。个性之中蕴含共性，但不能代表共性，共性从个性中提炼而来，但终究不是个性。语言是以言语为基础的，但是言语和语言是两种绝对不同的东西，它们的区别主要表现在： (1)就属性而言。语言是社会的，言语是个人的。语言是社会的产物，是由集团内部所有成员共同创造的。个人的言语是在其运用语言的过程中融入了个人的印记[5]。每个人都有自己说话、写作的“习惯”，这些“习惯”充分体现着主体的个性。鲁迅先生在写作时喜欢用大量的虚词和双重否定来表示肯定，很多读者便凭借这两点就能认出他的作品。在近期的一则新闻报道中也可以看出言语的个人性。报道称，现在的小学生用图案代替文字做成“密码纸条”来传递彼此的秘密，且不易被家长和老师发现其中内容。而且，就算是同班同学，如果不是和他们属于一个朋友圈，团密码则不能被破译。所以，言语是个人现象。说什么话、话怎么说、选怎什么词汇使表达更贴切，则全是由说话者自己决定的。持同一种语言的人，其言语可以千差万别，每个人都有自己的发音特点，有时闻其声而未见其人便可知是谁在说话[3]15。 语言则就显得没有这么灵活。语言是随着社会发展变化而发展变化的，有其使用的具体环境与适用条件，如语言适用的群体是否发生变化等。如果通用一种语言的集团消失了，那么这种语言也就消失在历史之中成为永恒的密码。鲜卑语在中国史书中称为“夷语”“国语”“北语”“胡语”，被入主中原成为当时统治者的鲜卑族当做通用语言在东晋十六国至北朝时期广泛使用，鲜卑语一度在中国北方成为仅次于汉语的语言。至到北魏时期鲜卑势力衰弱，朝廷下令汉化鲜卑语。直至隋末，鲜卑族作为一个独立与汉族以外的民族历史就此结束，鲜卑语也就此失传。 (2)就数量上而言。语言是有限的，言语是无限的。语言=词汇+语法。语言中有多少个词和语法虽然不可能有明确的规定，但是词汇和语法的数量是有限的。各种出版的字典和语法书中几乎囊括了我们生活和工作所需的所有词汇和语法。言语=言语动作+言语作品。说话的多少、句子的长短、文章篇幅的大小，完全由个人意志决定，其数量是无限的。我们不可能记录所有的言语作品。句子长度的无限性是造成句子数量无限的原因之一[3]12。许多学者把研究语言的最重要的任务看做从语流中，从界限不清、数量无限、鱼贯排列的词语符号中，找出离散的、有限的单位，再根据一定的功能把它们概括成集合单位，并用后者构筑语言系统[6]12。 (3)就存在方式而言。语言对所有人来说是共同的，使每个人都可以掌握的。索绪尔将其形象的比喻为发给每个人使用的一本同样的字典。因为每个人的字典都是相同的，所以语言的存在方式可以表示为： 1+1+1+1+…=1[2]41

语言类型学

语言类型学 1.语言类型学的发展 较早的语言类型学的研究主要是分类学意义上的,她可以追溯到19世纪初期的形态类型学,当时的语言学家施列格尔(Friedrich von Schlegel)根据语言在形态方面的特征,把语言分为附加语(affixal)和屈折语( inflectional)两种类型。后来施列格尔的兄弟奥古斯特?施列格尔(August von Schlegel)又在前面的基础上加上了第三种类型:“无结构”语(nostructure),典型的如现代汉语[2?39]。德国语言学家洪堡特(W ilhelm von Humboldt, 1836)又在以上学者的基础上增加了第四种类型:多式综合语( incor-porating language)。如北美的一些语言,把动词和它的宾语整合成一个词汇形式。多式综合语的词根上可以黏附多个语素用来表示各种语法意义,一个动词词根上面可以黏附表示“时”、“体”、“态”、“式”、“人称”、“数”等各种语法意义的语素,可以构成一个结构很复杂的“词”。同样,名词的词形也有类似的语素组合形式,具有“数”、“格”等语法功能的语素与名词词根整合为一个词汇形式。实际上,奥古斯特?施列格尔的三种类型“无结构”(no structure)、“附加”(affixal)、“屈折”( inflec-tional)即相当于奥古斯特?施莱希尔的孤立语( iso-lating,例如汉语、越南语等),黏着语(agglutinative,例如蒙古语、日语、芬兰语、匈牙利语、土耳其语)和屈折语( inflectiona,l例如德语、法语、俄语、阿拉伯语等)。 萨丕尔(Edward Sapir)根据构成词的语素的多寡将语言分为“分析 语”(analytic) ,一个语素对应于一个词;“综合语”(syntheti c),少量的语素构成一个词;“多式综合语”(polysynthetic), 数量上较多的语素、一些特定词根一起共同构成一个词。因此,后来他又根据词形的变化,将语言分为四种类型:孤立语( isolating,绝对没有词缀的);黏着语

关于语言类型学

关于语言类型学 语言类型学(linguistic typology)是研究各种语言的特征并进行分类的学科。其方法是比较这些语言，找出其相同和相异之处。 语言类型学与历史比较语言学的区别 学者们比较语言特征往往抱有不同的目的。第1种是追溯历史渊源，其方法是比较各语言的语法结构和最古老的基本词汇的语音和语义,发现这些语言之间的亲属关系。第2种是建立人类语言类型体系，其方法是按某些特征把语言分类,如把汉语和马来-波利尼西亚语系波利尼西亚语族的萨摩亚语都归入孤立型语言(虽然二者并无亲属关系)。第3种是寻找人类语言的普遍现象或近乎普遍的现象,其方法是考察某一特征存在于多少种语言之中。这样做,同样不问所研究的语言是否有亲属关系。由于目的不同，第1种比较工作是历史比较语言学家的事情，第2、第3种才是类型语言学家的事情。 在语言类型研究方面有较大贡献的是德国的W.F.洪堡特,美国的E.萨丕尔、R.雅柯布逊和J.H.格林伯格,英国的S.乌尔曼(1914～1976)等。 按特征对语言进行分类 远在19世纪初期，德国语言学家F.von施列格尔(1772～1829)就把世界诸语言分为3大类型,即孤立型、粘着型和屈折型。后来洪堡特又增加了编插语或称多式综合语。 孤立型语言包括汉语、越南语、萨摩亚语等等，其主要特征有两个：①实词通常不带语法标志，如汉语单词“信”不分单复数，可指一封信或几封信；②句法关系主要靠词序表明,如"我写信”不能改为“我信写”或

“信写我”。粘着型包括蒙古语、曰语、芬兰语、匈牙利语、土耳其语等等，其特征是一个词根（或词干）前面，尤其是后面有一串表示语法关系的词缀，每个词缀只表示一个语法意义，每个语法意义也只用一个词缀表示，词缀同词缀之间在语音上界限分明，不融合在一起。如土耳其语odalarimdan〔从我的（一些）房间里〕是一个词，其中词根oda （房间）后面有后缀-lar（表示复数）,-im（表示第一人称单数的领属关系，相当于汉语“我的”），-dan（表示离格）等。屈折型包括拉丁语、希腊语、阿拉伯语等等，其特征是用词形的变化（即屈折）表示语法关系，而且往往一个词尾表示几个语法意义，如拉丁语am-o（我爱）中词尾-o同时表示现在时、主动态、第一人称、单数、陈述语气等5项。 上述语言类型的三分法是有用的，因为它能指出语言的一些基本特征。但这只是大体的划分，并不是十分严密和准确的。同一类型的语言，其间也还有许多差异。有的语言还兼有几种类型的特征，如英语的有些动词一个词形表示多种语法意义（He go-es表示陈述语气、现在时、主动态、第三人称单数），类似屈折型；英语词序比较固定，类似孤立型；但它的有些词根前后可能有几个表示语法意义的词缀，每个词缀只表示一个语法意义，词缀同词缀在语音上不融合在一起，界线分明，又类似粘着型,如英语的un-affect-edly（不矫揉造作地）中的un-表示否定,-ed 表示形容词后缀，-ly表示副词后缀，用粘着方式串联在一起；所以有人说，英语是由屈折型走向孤立型的语言。 对于语言，除象上面那样按词表示语法意义的不同方式分类外，还可以

认知语言学与语言类型学的关系

Cognitive Linguistics and linguistic typology Johan van der Auwera and Jan Nuyts University of Antwerp 0. Introduction This chapter looks into the relations between Cognitive Linguistics and linguistic typology. Thefirst half of the chapter offers a ‘neutral’ characterization of the field of linguistic typology.Linguistic typology is defined as a cross-linguistic, descriptive as well as explanatory enterprisedevoted to the unity and diversity of language with respect to linguistic form or the relationbetween linguistic form and meaning or function. The second half is devoted to an explorationof the relations between linguistic typology and Cognitive Linguistics. It is argued that the twostrands are eminently compatible, that there is work that illustrates this, but also that mostcognitive linguists and typologists nevertheless work in different spheres. In a first section wediscuss the difficulty of applying typology’s sampling method in Cognitive Linguistics. In asecond one, we focus on the typologists’ prim e orientation on grammar and their hesitation torelate their strictly speaking linguistic generalizations to wider cognitive concerns. 1. What is linguistic typology? The term ‘linguistic typology’ is rather general. It could be taken to mean no more than theinvestigation of linguistic types. Linguistic types appear when the linguist has classified linguistic entities in virtue of a similarity. In this sense, any linguistic discipline counts as typology. Inmorphology, for instance, prefixes and suffixes can be said to be entities of the same type, called‘affixes’; and affixes and roots or stems are also entities of the same type, called ‘morphemes’.In sociolinguistics, most Australian languages and most native American languages are of thesame type: they are all threatened languages. Or in

关于语言类型学

关于语言类型学

关于语言类型学 语言类型学(linguistic typology)是研究各种语言的特征并进行分类的学科。其方法是比较这些语言，找出其相同和相异之处。 语言类型学与历史比较语言学的区别 学者们比较语言特征往往抱有不同的目的。第1种是追溯历史渊源，其方法是比较各语言的语法结构和最古老的基本词汇的语音和语义,发现这些语言之间的亲属关系。第2种是建立人类语言类型体系，其方法是按某些特征把语言分类,如把汉语和马来-波利尼西亚语系波利尼西 亚语族的萨摩亚语都归入孤立型语言(虽然二者并无亲属关系)。第3种是寻找人类语言的普遍现象或近乎普遍的现象,其方法是考察某一特征存在于多少种语言之中。这样做,同样不问所研究的语言是否有亲属关系。由于目的不同，第1种比较工作是历史比较语言学家的事情，第2、第3种才是类型语言学家的事情。 在语言类型研究方面有较大贡献的是德国的W.F.洪堡特,美国的E.萨丕尔、R.雅柯布逊和J.H.格林伯格,英国的S.乌尔曼(1914～1976)等。 按特征对语言进行分类 远在19世纪初期，德国语言学家F.von施列格尔(1772～1829)就把世界诸语言分为3大类型,即孤立型、粘着型和屈折型。后来洪堡特又增加了编插语或称多式综合语。 孤立型语言包括汉语、越南语、萨摩亚语等等，其主要特征有两个：

①实词通常不带语法标志，如汉语单词“信”不分单复数，可指一封信或几封信；②句法关系主要靠词序表明,如"我写信”不能改为“我信写”或“信写我”。粘着型包括蒙古语、曰语、芬兰语、匈牙利语、土耳其语等等，其特征是一个词根（或词干）前面，尤其是后面有一串表示语法关系的词缀，每个词缀只表示一个语法意义，每个语法意义也只用一个词缀表示，词缀同词缀之间在语音上界限分明，不融合在一起。如土耳其语odalarimdan〔从我的（一些）房间里〕是一个词，其中词根oda （房间）后面有后缀-lar（表示复数）,-im（表示第一人称单数的领属关系，相当于汉语“我的”），-dan（表示离格）等。屈折型包括拉丁语、希腊语、阿拉伯语等等，其特征是用词形的变化（即屈折）表示语法关系，而且往往一个词尾表示几个语法意义，如拉丁语am-o（我爱）中词尾-o同时表示现在时、主动态、第一人称、单数、陈述语气等5项。 上述语言类型的三分法是有用的，因为它能指出语言的一些基本特征。但这只是大体的划分，并不是十分严密和准确的。同一类型的语言，其间也还有许多差异。有的语言还兼有几种类型的特征，如英语的有些动词一个词形表示多种语法意义（He go-es表示陈述语气、现在时、主动态、第三人称单数），类似屈折型；英语词序比较固定，类似孤立型；但它的有些词根前后可能有几个表示语法意义的词缀，每个词缀只表示一个语法意义，词缀同词缀在语音上不融合在一起，界线分明，又类似粘着型,如英语的un-affect-edly（不矫揉造作地）中的un-表示否定,-ed表示形容词后缀，-ly表示副词后缀，用粘着方式串联在一起；