LECTURE 1

CONTRASTIVE TYPOLOGY
AS A BRANCH OF
LINGUISTICS.
HISTORY OF TYPOLOGICAL
INVESTIGATIONS
 Outline
11 Contrastive Typology as a branch of
linguistics, its aims and tasks.

2 Methods of typological analysis.

3
The beginning and development of typological
investigations in the 17th-21st centuries.

Typological investigations in Contrastive

44
Typology of the English and Ukrainian
languages.
 1. Contrastive
typology as a branch
of linguistics, its aims
and tasks
Typology as a branch of linguistics aims at
establishing similar general linguistic
categories serving as a basis for the
classification of languages of different
types, irrespective of their genealogical
relationship.

Contrastive typology represents a

linguistic subject of typology based on the
method of comparison or contrasting.
Contrastive typology is a branch of linguistics aimed
at investigating languages in comparison with other
languages to establish their peculiarities and also their
common and divergent features/phenomena.

Contrastive typology aims at establishing the most

general structural types of languages on the basis of
their dominant or common phonetical, morphological,
lexical and syntactic features. Apart from this it
equally treat dominant or common features only, as
well as divergent features/phenomena only, which are
found both in languages of the same structural type
(synthetic, analytical, etc.) as well as in languages of
different structural types (I. V. Korunets).
 Aims of Contrastive Typology

 to identify and classify accordingly the main isomorphic and

allomorphic features characteristic of languages under
investigation;
 to draw from these common or divergent features
respectively the isomorphic regularities and the allomorphic
singularities in the languages contrasted;
 to establish on the basis of the obtained isomorphic
features the typical language structures and the types of
languages;
 to perform a scientifically substantiated general
classification of languages;
 to establish on this basis the universal features/phenomena,
which pertain to each single language of the world;
 Tasks of Contrastive Typology
 to create scientifically well-grounded theoretical as well as
practical phonetics/phonologies, grammars, lexicologies,
stylistics and dictionaries of various languages;
 to acquaint the student with the fundamentals of Contrastive
Typology as a branch of linguistics in general and with some of
its principal methods of analysis in particular;
 to provide the students with the understanding of a systemic
organisation of all languages;
 to provide the students with the linguistic results necessary
for their successful methodological work at school (for
instance to be able to forecast the difficulties which are the
result of typological peculiarities of different languages).
2. METHODS OF
TYPOLOGICAL
ANALYSIS
1. The comparative method is aimed at establishing the
isomorphic (alongside of allomorphic) features, the
dominant features and on their basis the
establishment of structural types of languages under
contrastive investigation.

2. The typological method deals with comparison on the

basis of which isomorphic and allomorphic features of
whole systems, subsystems and microsystems of
languages under investigation are revealed.

3. The contrastive linguistic method is used to establish

structural or semantic isomorphisms and
allomorphisms in the contrasted languages. It is
usually employed to investigate a restricted number of
genealogically related or non-related languages.
 4. The indexes method is aimed at identifying the
quantitative co-occurrence or frequency of some feature
or phenomenon in the contrasted languages on the basis of
statistic indexes such as: the index of synthesis in the
words, the index of agglutination, the index of derivation,
the index of prefixation, the index of suffixation, the index
of the form-building capacity of words, the index of
concord. It is purely typological method of contrastive
investigation.
The synthetic structure index is found out with the help
of formula: Thus, , the M/W (when the morphemes are
lettered as M and the number of words in the passage as
W). Languages that have this index from 1 till 2 are
analytical, from 2 till 3 – synthetic, 3 and more –
incorporating. In English it is between 1.62 to 1.68.
 5. Deductive and inductive methods
The deductive method is based on logical
computation/calculation which suggests all admissive variants of
realisation of a certain feature/phenomenon in speech of one or
of some contrasted languages.
The existence of the attributive AN and NA structure word-
group patterns in English and Ukrainian is indisputable: the grey
sky — the sky grey, сіре небо — небо сіре. Common are also the
dAN and the dDAN patterns in English and Ukrainian (eg: that
nice girl, that very nice girl — та гарна дівчина, та дуже
гарна дівчина). Rarer are also ANd or DANd patterns word-
groups, eg: dear friend mine, very dear friend mine; дорогий
друже мій, друже дуже дорогий мій.
Ukrainian word-groups of both these patterns regularly occur
in speech. The deductive computation helps find some other
transforms of the ANd pattern with the post-positional pronoun
determiner as in the word-group "nice young sisters of his" or "a
brave deed of hers" which are impossible in Ukrainian, where a
prepositional pronoun or noun displays a strong objective relation
(eg: добра звістка така найшла тоді його в шпиталі).
6. The statistic method is employed in contrastive
typology for establishing the necessary quantitative and
qualitative representation of some features or languages
data, for identifying the percentage of co-occurrence of
some features/phenomena or language units in speech of
the contrasted languages.
- to establish the representation of the combinability of
different classes of consonants with vowels in the
contrasted languages;
- to establish the combinability of consonants and vowels
in the initial, middle and closing positions of syllables
in the contrasted languages;
- to establish the co­-occurrence of different classes of
words in speech in the contrasted languages;
- to establish the correlation of different types of
morphemes in the contrasted languages, etc.
7. The ICs (immediate constituents) method is employed to
contrast only language units with the aim of establishing
their constituent parts (consonental/vocalic components in
words/ syllables, the morphemic components of words, parts
of syntactic units) in one or some contrasted languages.

8. The transformational method is used to identify the

nature of some language unit in a contrasted language. Its
reliability is clearly proved through translation, which is
always the best transformation of any language unit. The
transformational method is employed:
a) to identify the nature of a language unit in the source
language or in the target language;
b) to reveal the difference in the form of expression in the
contrasted languages.
3. THEBEGINNING AND
DEVELOPMENT OF
TYPOLOGICAL
INVESTIGATIONS
IN THE 17 -21
th st

CENTURIES
 F. Schlegel (1772 – 1829)

1. The affixal languages (in which the form-building of

words is realised through affixes added to the root
morphemes).
2. The inflexional languages (which have no affixes added
to the root morphemes).

A. Schlegel (1767 – 1845)

1. The amorphic languages (those without any

grammatical structure);
2. The affixal languages;
3. The flexional languages.
 Wilhelm Humboldt (1761 – 1835)

1. The isolating languages, which are devoid of the

form-building morphemes (Chinese);
2. The agglutinative languages (Turkic group);
3. The flexional languages (Indo-European or Semitic
languages);
4. The incorporating languages, which is characterised
by the possibility of words to combine and form
specific word-sentences (languages of the American
Indians).
 Franz Bopp (1791 – 1867)

1) the language type with the root morpheme consisting

of one syllable only (monosyllabic languages);
2) the language type in which the root morpheme can
combine with other roots and affixal morphemes (like in
most Indo-European languages);
3) the language types with disyllabic and even trisyllabic
root word-structures (as in Semitic languages).

H. Steinthal (1823 – 1899)

added one more new typologically relevant criterion – the

placement of syntactically principal parts in the sentence
(e.g. the predicate always follows the subject in
statements of such analytical languages as English,
Norwegian, etc.).
 F. Mistely (1841 – 1903)

criteria
- the placement of syntactically principal parts in the sentence
- the inner form of the word.

Franz N. Finck (1867 – 1910)

1) the subordinating word-type languages (e.g. present-day

Turkish);
2) the incorporating word-type languages with the most
extended word structures (as in the language of Greenland
inhabitants;
3) the regulating type languages having a rather weak
connection between the auxiliary words and affixes (e.g. Subia
language - Bantu language family);
4) the isolating root languages (e.g. Chinese);
5) the isolating stem languages (e.g. Samoa language);
6) the root inflected language type (e.g. Arabic);
7) the stem inflected language type (e.g. Greek);
8) the group inflected language type (e.g. Georgian).
 E. Sapir (1884 – 1939)

1) the simple purely relational languages in which

the syntactic relations are realised without the help of
affixal morphemes (as in Chinese);
2) the complicated purely relational type languages
in which the syntactic relations can be realised with the
help of affixes and without their help (as in Turkish);
3) the simple mixed-type relational languages,
realising their syntactic connections both by means of
agglutination or by means of fusion (as in French);
4) the complex mixed relational type languages in
which the meanings of root morphemes may be changed
with the help of affixes or inner alterations (like in
Latin or in present-day English).
 The Prague school linguists
N. S. Trubetskoy
O. Isachenko R. O. Jakobson
V. Mathesius
V. Skalička
I. Levy
and others

carried on their major investigations in

charactereological typology
 N. Ya. Marr (1864 – 1934)

I. Meshchaninov (1883 – 1967)

- passive
- ergative
- nominative
 G. P. Melnikov

B. A. Uspenskiy

M. Ya. Kalynovych

L. I. Prokopova

I. V. Borisjuk
 5. TYPOLOGICAL
INVESTIGATIONS IN
CONTRASTIVE
TYPOLOGY OF
ENGLISH AND
UKRAINIAN
 T. A. Brovchenko investigated phonetic systems of
English and Ukrainian languages.
A list of the most typical mistakes of Ukrainians learning
English and the methods of avoiding them was presented.
The scientist also analysed the intonation structure of
English and Ukrainian utterances in dependence on the
position of the semantic centre and revealed common
acoustic characteristics of the intonation structure of the
utterances with different positions of the semantic centre
and those specific in each of the analysed languages.
T. A. Brovchenko and T. M. Koroljeva analyzed the
phonetic structure and functions of modal utterances in
English and Ukrainian speech and determined intonation
peculiarities of the main types of modal utterances and
their variants.
 Yu. O. Zhluktenko comprised the English and
Ukrainian languages and their interrelations in the
North American countries. The linguist investigated
the discrimination between contrastive and
typological studies, connection between theoretical
and pragmatic aspects of contrastive and typological
analysis, the choice of the model of contrastive
analysis, etc.
M. A. Zhovtobrjuh and a group of linguists
analysed isomorphic and allomorphic features in
grammar of the Ukrainian and English languages.
E. A. Nushikyan gave a detailed analysis of
acoustic characteristics of various types of emotions
in English in comparison with the corresponding
emotional variants in Ukrainian, and presented an
original classification of English and Ukrainian
emotions.