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29 - Language Typology

from Part III - SFL in Application

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 May 2019

By
Abhishek Kumar Kashyap
Edited by
Geoff Thompson ,
Wendy L. Bowcher ,
Lise Fontaine  and
David Schönthal
Geoff Thompson
Affiliation:
University of Liverpool
Wendy L. Bowcher
Affiliation:
Sun Yat-Sen University, China
Lise Fontaine
Affiliation:
Cardiff University
David Schönthal
Affiliation:
Cardiff University
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Summary

Language typology as a branch of general linguistics has significantly grown in the past few decades. The field of linguistics that began as a method of linguistic inquiry into the philosophy of language and to explore crosslinguistic diversity and genetic relationships among languages has expanded to be much more inclusive and results-driven: typological insights are applied to strengthen other related fields, such as intercultural and cross-cultural communication, translation, and language learning and teaching, and to answer practical questions that language professionals, e.g. translators, interpreters, and forensic linguists, face on a day-to-day basis. This chapter presents a snapshot of the development of language typology and discusses key strands of typological research in language, e.g. what the term ‘language typology’ refers to and what difference typological insights make in our life. Specifically, this chapter aims to (1) explain the meaning of ‘language typology’ and what types of questions typologists engage in; (2) sketch the development of this field over time and through crosslinguistic and comparative works; (3) summarize key theoretical approaches to language typology, presenting a comparison of formal and functional approaches, with special attention to the SFL approach; and (4) discuss the application of typological insights to other related fields.
Type
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The Cambridge Handbook of Systemic Functional Linguistics , pp. 767 - 792
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2019

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