ABSTRACT

Classification of languages based on grammatical characteristics, i.e. ignoring genetic or geographical connections. The classical typology based on morphological criteria comes from A.W.von Schlegel’s distinction between analytic and synthetic languages: in analytic languages ( also isolating language), such as Classical Chinese, the grammatical relations between words in a sentence are expressed by independent syntactic form elements (e.g. prepositions), while in synthetic languages they are expressed by dependent morphological units (see Schlegel 1818). In the synthetic languages, Schlegel distinguishes between agglutinating languages, in which grammatical and lexical morphemes with simple semantic components are simply affixed to each other (e.g. Turkish), and inflectional languages, whose words cannot be analyzed into single morphemes with simple semantic meaning and which sometimes demonstrate phenomena such as root or stem alternation (e.g. Sanskrit). Humboldt (1836) added the term ‘polysynthetic languages,’ ( polysynthesis) in which a word often combines several word stems with very specific semantic meaning (e.g. Iroquoian) (also incorporating language). In this early stage of language typology, value judgments were also attached to each type: the richness of forms in the inflectional languages was considered a sign of greater development, while the isolating and agglutinating languages were seen as less developed stages on their way to becoming inflectional languages. For a history of the research on language typology, see Haarman (1976). The main objections against this traditional, primarily morphological, typology are based on the lack of theoretical agreement about the nature of the elements (such as syllable, morpheme, word) and properties (such as intonation, concatenation) in question, as well as its too categorical (as opposed to gradual) nature, which does not sufficiently take into consideration the interdependence of phonological, morphological, and syntactic criteria.