Greenberg criteria and indices. Linguistic typology and language areas: Textbook

M/w - index of language syntheticity.

M - number of morphemes in a word.

W - number of words.

IS>2 - analytical language (English-language).

IS from 2 to 3 synthetic languages ​​(Russian, language)

IS>3 – polysynthetic languages ​​(Chukchi)

There are no pure language types.

1. Syntactic typology(20th century I. Meshchanin)

Phenological typology.

Genealogical classification of languages. There are 22 families in total. Some do not belong to any family: Japanese, Korean, dead languages.

The Indo-European family consists of 10 groups:

1. Slavic

2. Baltic

3. Germanic

4. Greek

5. Kola

6. Iranian

7. Romanesque

8. Indo-Aryan

9. Armenian and Albanian

Language as a social phenomenon. Functions of the language.

Language - this is the basic condition for the possibility of human existence .

Language - This is the environment in which the process of mutual agreement with the interlocutor takes place and mutual understanding is achieved.

Language - This is a special reality within, through which man and man understand the world. Language covers all aspects of human life; each language reflects certain ways of perceiving the world. The knowledge that is expressed in language is formed into a certain system of views - collective philosophy, which is acquired by all native speakers. Every nation has a national specific way of perceiving the world. (mentality).

E. Sapir: “The real world is largely unconsciously built on the basis of the linguistic norms of a certain group. We speak, see, hear, perceive all phenomena of reality, in the way that the linguistic norms of our society suggest this form expressions."

Functions of the language.

1. Communicative - the main function of language, the use of language to convey information;

2. Thought-forming - formation of thinking of the individual and society;

Ascertaining

Interrogative

Appellative (conscription)

Contact making

7. Metalinguistic. The point is that the metalanguage of any code is formed in words.

8. Aesthetic - sphere of creativity;

Indicator (accessory)

All functions are interconnected.

Interaction and relationship between language and speech.

The distinction between language and speech was established by the porter Ferdinand de Saussure. However, Lev Vladimirovich Shcherba, Alexander Afanasyevich Potebnya, Nikolai Vyacheslavovich Krushevsky and others spoke about this before him.

Speech– these are acts of speaking, understanding, utterance, text.

Language or language system is an inventory of language units (grammars).

Speech activity- this is a set of psychophysical work carried out by the speaker to produce speech, consisting of acts of understanding and acts of speaking; as a result of linguistic activity, a statement or text is obtained.

Speech act- (from American links by J. Searle and J. Austin). They argued that the true content of speech must be sought in the situation that has an impact. It is a two-way process, covering on the one hand speaking, and on the other hand parallel auditory perception and understanding.

A text is created in a speech act. In speech, both written and spoken, language is presented in a blurred form.

Level structure of language.

The first person to talk about this is Ferdinand de Saussure. In our country they were engaged in systematization Solntsev, Melnikov, Shchur.

System is a complex object consisting of parts.

Solntsev defined a system as an integral object consisting of elements that are connected. One of the most important properties of language is its heterogeneity and ability to change. The language system includes several different levels:

1. Lower– this phonetic level is represented by a set of phonemes. Phoneme is the indivisible ultimate unit of language. Backgrounds are specific instances of a phoneme.

2. Morphological– it includes morphemes. Morphs– these are real instances of phonemes.

3. Lexical– includes lexemes and leks in speech. Lexes change shape (about the weather).

4. Higher– syntactic (sentences, statements in speech, in the language of sentence models).

Units of language levels and their functions.

1. Phoneme(minimal units of the sound structure of a language, serving to form and distinguish significant units of language: morphemes, words )

– constitutive

-distinctive - is expressed in the fact that the phoneme serves for phonetic recognition and semantic identification of words and morphemes. The distinctive function includes perceptual (identification) and significative (meaning-discriminating) functions.

- perceptual- (identification, i.e. function of perception);

- delimitation- (delimiting, i.e. capable of separating the beginnings and ends of morphemes and words).

2. Morpheme ( minimum meaningful part of a word )

Associative (new words and forms)

3. Lexeme(a word considered as a unit of the vocabulary of a language in the totality of all its specific grammatical forms and inflections expressing them, as well as all possible meanings )

- nominative(words name objects of reality)

- index(words indicating an object)

Offer

- communicative

Relations between units of language.

There are 2 types of relationship:

1. Paradigmatic(books A, books Ouch– case paradigm; eagle, kite - birds of prey - lexical paradigm; [p],[p"] phonetic paradigm).

Paradigmatic relationships - relations of opposition of several elements of language, choice of one of the mutually exclusive elements; units of language are thus united in the consciousness of the user of the language, despite the impossibility of their real unification in the act of speech.

2. Syntagmatic relations – belong to speech activity. Each unit of language in the process of speech acts in relation to other units of language, while revealing its combinatory capabilities (significance, valence).

Phonetics subject.

Phonetics- is the science of the sound material of language, the science of the use of these materials in the meaning of units of language and speech, as well as historical changes in this material and methods of its use.

Phonetics uses a special type of writing - transcription.

All sounds are studied from different points of view. Based on physiological or acoustic signs, this approach is called acoustic aspect.

Biological aspect studies the work performed by a person during pronunciation and auditory perception.

Functional aspect studies sounds from the point of view of their use in speech, as well as the role of sounds in ensuring the functioning of language as a means of communication. Also includes phonology(the science of the sound structure of a language, studying the structure and functioning of the smallest insignificant units of language (syllables, phonemes)). Phonology tasks:

Establishing the composition of phonemes

Methods for their implementation in the speech stream

Features of the combination of phonemes in a word

Phoneme function

Studying the features of phonemes

Its creators were N. S. Trubetskoy, R. Yakobson, S. O. Kartsevsky, a significant general theoretical influence on the emergence of phonology was exerted by the works F. de Saussure and K. Bühler. The contribution to preparing the ground for the development of phonology is especially great. I. A. Baudouin de Courtenay.

Three aspects of learning speech sounds.

1. Acoustic. The sounds are different:

1) pitch;

2) longitude;

3) by force;

Timbre.

all sounds are divided into vowels and consonants, due to the presence of muses. tones and noises, a separate group - sonorous (sonata)

2. Biological aspects - 2 types of study:

1) pronunciation;

2) perceptual .

Organs are divided in terms of pronunciation into:

Active (tongue, lips)

passive (teeth, nasopharynx, larynx)

Articulatory classification of sounds:

Vowels (mouth openers), (lack of focal formation)

6 main ones will be distinguished. Feature in vowel classification:

Moving the tongue back or forward (main back, middle, front)

The degree of tongue advancement up and down (low, high, medium rise)

Labialization (roundedness)

Nasalization (pronunciation through the nose)

Ch. various by length and brevity

27. Quantitative methods in determination
degree of analyticism-synthesis of languages

The turn of typologists to quantitative methods was associated with insurmountable difficulties in classifying languages. In particular, it turned out that isolating languages ​​are by no means “superanalytical” languages: the proportion of synthetic phenomena can be quite high here. It also turned out that incorporation (polysyntheticism) can be combined with strong analytical features in the structure of language.

Humboldt also wrote that language types are a kind of mental abstraction; There are no “purely” analytical or “purely” synthetic languages. In reality, classifying a language as one or another type of language only means the predominance of expression methods in it. grammatical meanings, corresponding to this type.

Sapir was very close to the idea of ​​measuring the typological properties of languages. In his classic book “Language” (1921), he constantly strives to indicate different degrees of representation of certain phenomena: he characterizes some languages ​​as slightly synthetic type, others - like weakly agglutinative languages, third - slightly symbolic, highly symbolic type(term symbolic it means “using internal inflection”); He placed some languages ​​in brackets to indicate the “weak development” of this phenomenon (see, for example, Sapir 1993, 134).

In particular, believing, following Sapir, that the synthetic nature of a language essentially depends on the degree of morphemic complexity of a word, Greenberg calculated for different languages synthetic coefficient by relating the total number of morphs (in the same text in these languages) to the total number of words in this text. For example, if a language does not use affixes and does not resort to compounding, then a text 100 words long will have 100 morphs and, therefore, the synthetic index of such a language will be equal to 1.

It is clear that 1 is the minimum index of syntheticity and at the same time an indicator of the maximum analyticity of the language. If in a language each word has on average at least 1 affix, then per 100 words in such a language there are 200 morphs (100 root and 100 affix) and, therefore, its syntheticity index is 2. Syntheticity indices from 1 to 2 were obtained for languages , which have traditionally been considered analytical languages; from 2 to 3 - for synthetic languages; above 3 - for incorporating languages ​​(they began to be called polysynthetic).

Table 27 shows syntheticity indices for Sanskrit (of the attested languages ​​the closest to the Indo-European proto-language), three languages ​​of the Indo-European family (and for English - taking into account its two historical periods), for the Yakut language (Turkic family), one of the African languages ​​(family Bantu), for Vietnamese (isolating language with extreme low index syntheticity) and for the polysynthetic Eskimo language. (Sources: Greenberg 1963, 91; Quantitative Typology 1982).

Table 27. Syntheticity indices for 9 languages

Syntheticity-analyticity indices make it possible to see not only the synchronous differences between languages ​​in the degree of syntheticity, but also the different speed at which the general typological evolution of related languages ​​occurs.

In the practice of typological research, a special place is occupied by the indexing method, or the method of typological indices, developed by J. Greenberg.

J. Greenberg based his method, which due to the nature of the quantitative indicators used is also called quantitative, on individual features and characteristics that represent certain relationships and are expressed in the form of numerical indices.

J. Greenberg carried out his calculations on a text that included 100 words, using the following parameters:

The first parameter is the degree of synthesis or the overall complexity of the word. If the number of morphemes in the examined text is denoted by the letter M, and the number of words by the letter W, then the ratio SCH is an indicator of synthesis and is called the syntheticity index, which for the English language ranges between 1.62 and 1.68, for the Russian language 2.33-2.45, that is, the syntheticity index for languages ​​of the analytical structure will be lower than for languages ​​of the synthetic structure.

The second parameter is communication methods. If we denote by the letter A the number of agglutinative constructions, and J the number of seams between morphemes, then the ratio y serves as an indicator of the degree of cohesion of the word and is called the agglutination index. J. Greenberg believes that a language with a high agglutination index should be considered an agglutinative language, and a language with a low agglutination index should be considered a fusion language, that is, inflectional.

The third parameter is the prevalence of derivational and inflectional morphemes. Taking R equal to the number of root morphemes found in the text under study, and W equal to the number of words in the same text, we obtain the ratio, that is, the composition index.

The fourth parameter serves to characterize the following of affixes to the root. If we denote prefixes by the symbol P, then the relation ^, that is prefix index will show the ratio of the number of prefixes to the number of words. The attitude is suffixity index, will show the ratio of the number of suffixes to the number of words.

If pure inflection is denoted by Pi, then the relation SCH, that is inflection index, V pure form characterizes the inflectional capabilities of the language. If the connection expressed by agreement is denoted by Co, then the relation SCH represents agreement index.

J. Greenberg's indexing method caused a wide response among linguists. This method was later improved by the Slovak scientist V. Krupa, who transformed the value of the indices so that they could fit into the usual rating scale from 0 to 1.

In addition to the above methods of typological analysis and description, which are specific to typology, typological studies use methods adopted for research in other branches of linguistics, for example, the distributive method, etc.

Chapter 4 typology of phonological systems of English and Russian languages ​​The concept of the phonological level of language

Among those levels that form the complex hierarchical structure of language, the phonological level should be named first.

The basic unit of this level is the phoneme. In its essence, a phoneme is an abstract linguistic unit that combines all those common features characteristic of real sounds - the backgrounds in which it exists or is realized. So, for example, one of these common features may be the explosive nature of the backgrounds or nasality, etc.

At the same time, the phoneme, as the basic unit of the phonological level of language, performs two very important functions for communication purposes: 1) constitutive function, consisting in the fact that phonemes are the necessary building material for units of morphological and other levels (without phonemes, neither morphemes nor words can exist);2) distinctive function, otherwise called distinctive, which makes it possible to distinguish some morphemes from others, some words from others, which is also of utmost importance for the purposes of communication.

Thus, a phoneme can be defined as “a class of physically similar and functionally identical sounds.”

From this definition of phoneme it is clear that the same phoneme can sound differently under different conditions. So, for example, the Russian phoneme [a] in the pre-stressed position sounds like [l] (cf.: Russian [lk but], [l din], etc.); the English phoneme [t] in the position before a consonant loses its aspiration. Such sounds, which are varieties of the same class of physically similar sounds, are called allophones or variants of a given phoneme.

Phonemes in morphemes and words are combined into syllables, which can be considered as a natural unit of segmentation of the speech stream.

Along with phonemes and their variants, which are called segmental units based on their ability to be used in individual segments of the speech chain, the phonological level includes supersegmental, or supersegmental, units, which are usually understood as stress and intonation.

GREENBERG, JOSEPH(Greenberg, Joseph Harold) (1915–2001), American linguist.

Born on May 28, 1915 in New York in a family of recent emigrants from Europe. In childhood and adolescence, he was seriously involved in music. He studied social anthropology at Columbia University (New York), from which he graduated in 1936. He did field research on religious cults in Nigeria and other African countries, and received a doctorate from Northwestern University (Chicago) in 1940; Greenberg's first monograph, published in 1947, was devoted to the influence of Islam on the religious cults of Sudan. During World War II he worked in a decryption service. After the war, he taught briefly at the University of Minnesota, and from 1948 to 1962 at Columbia University; Headed the Department of Anthropology. From 1962 until the end of his life - professor of the department of anthropology (head in 1971–1974) and professor of the department of linguistics at Stanford University, retired from 1985. From 1964 to 1981 he served as Chairman of the African Studies Committee. President of the Linguistic Society of America (1976); member National Academy Sciences of the USA and the American Academy of Humanities and exact sciences. Winner of many academic awards, including the prestigious Parson Prize in the Social Sciences (1997). Greenberg died at Stanford on May 7, 2001.

In linguistics of the second half of the 20th century. Greenberg occupies a peculiar place. Greenberg was a consistent empiricist and, in fact, throughout his half-century of activity in linguistics, he was engaged in the classification (from various sides and on various grounds) of the languages ​​of the world. To solve this problem, he was offered a number of technical techniques, and in the course of solving it, a number of observations were made, familiarity with which later became an integral part of professional competence linguist. This resulted in an exceptionally high citation index for Greenberg's work; in the name index of the domestic “Linguistic Encyclopedic Dictionary” Greenberg is the leader in the number of mentions, ahead of even F. de Saussure.

One of Greenberg's most famous results is his classification of African languages, developed in the 1950s and published as a journal article in 1955 and as a book. Languages ​​of Africa (Languages ​​of Africa) in 1963. He proposed the unification of more than one and a half thousand African languages ​​into only four large language (macro) families with their further division ( cm. AFRICAN LANGUAGES), although it caused serious objections (especially in Europe), however, later it became a generally accepted way of organizing material. Three decades later, a similar work (using the same methods) was completed by him for the languages ​​of America. Book Languages ​​of the North and South America (Languages ​​in the Americas) was published in 1987 and caused even more heated discussion. Greenberg's proposed unification of the New World languages ​​into three macrofamilies (Amerindian, Na-Dene and Eskimo-Aleutian) received, however, support from population geneticists who studied the DNA of the indigenous population of America and postulated three waves of settlement of America (though later research by geneticists indicate rather in favor of a single settlement). In 2000, Greenberg published the first volume of the book Indo-European language and its closest relatives: the Eurasian language family (Indo-European and Its Closes Relatives: The Eurasiatic Language Family), in which he put forward a hypothesis about the ancient kinship of most languages ​​of Eurasia (without Southeast Asia, the languages ​​of which Greenberg did not study and, according to available evidence, regretted before his death that he did not have enough time for this, and without Afroasiatic languages) , which echoes the Nostratic hypothesis developed mainly by Russian scientists (). Greenberg included Indo-European, Uralic, Altai, Eskimo-Aleutian languages ​​(also common in North America) and Chukchi-Kamchatka languages; some unification that includes Korean, Japanese and Ainu languages; as well as the Nivkh language. The second volume was completed by the scientist six months before his death.

Criticism of Greenberg's genealogical classifications is largely due to the fact that the basis of his research is not so much the strict canonical methods of comparative historical linguistics and not even lexicostatistical methods (recognized as less accurate and reliable), but rather the method he calls mass or multilateral comparison and involves total comparison of the most extensive material possible from a large number of languages ​​and making essentially intuitive judgments about their proximity. Greenberg's response to criticism boiled down to pointing out that, dealing with hundreds and thousands of languages ​​that do not have written monuments, it is still impossible to do anything in the foreseeable time using strict comparative methods. Therefore, an intuitive classification, but supported by the most extensive linguistic material, is better than no classification at all. In fact, Greenberg spoke here from positions characteristic of scientists of the first half of the 19th century, the results of which, also obtained on the basis of impressionistic judgments about the similarity of languages, were largely confirmed with the advent of strict methods of historical reconstruction.

In contrast to Greenberg's controversial genealogical constructions, his achievements in the field of linguistic typology are generally recognized. Greenberg was one of the pioneers of the study of so-called linguistic universals (statements that fix empirically established general structural properties of languages); his schemes proposed for studying the typology of word order are now used everywhere, and universals concerning word order initiated the development of various explanatory theories and seriously influenced the development of syntactic typology and, more broadly, grammatical theory. The quantitative typology proposed by Greenberg became one of the most notable contributions made to the morphological typology of languages ​​after E. Sapir.

Pavel Parshin

The words are richer. A polysynthetic language is synthetic to an even greater extent, and the words in it are extremely complicated [Sapir 1993: 122-123]. The third classification of languages ​​by E. Sapir is quite acceptable in relation to isolating, agglutinative and inflectional-fusion languages. However, in relation to incorporating languages, it turns out to be flawed. If in non-incorporating languages ​​we are dealing with varying degrees of affixal morphologization of a word, then in incorporating languages ​​it may be not a word, but a phrase (with partial incorporation) or a whole sentence (with full incorporation). In incorporating languages, it is not individual words that are “extremely complicated,” but phrases or sentences that are merged into single accentual units. E. Sapir, on the word level, put incorporating languages ​​on a par with non-incorporating languages. That is why his classification in question appears to be a movement from languages ​​in which words are minimally complicated by affixes (analytic languages) to languages ​​where they are complicated by affixes to a maximum extent (polysynthetic languages). Synthetic languages ​​occupy an intermediate position between them [Danilenko, http://islu.irk.ru/danilenko/index-l.htm]. Highest value E. Sapir gave his latest classification of languages. This is no coincidence, since the three previous classifications suffer from obvious shortcomings. The disadvantage of E. Sapir's first and second classifications is their incompleteness: they do not cover all languages, and yet their status is general typological. In fact, from the first classification of E. Sapir, two types of languages ​​dropped out at once - incorporating and externally inflectional, since it presented only isolating, prefixal, suffixal and intrainflective (symbolic). There were no incorporating languages ​​in the second classification of the American typologist. In their place were placed symbolic ones, which are in the Humboldtian classification along with external inflectional ones. The shortcomings of E. Sapir's third classification of languages ​​are not so obvious. But here, too, we see, firstly, excessive vagueness in understanding the degree of analyticity or syntheticity of the language (it is no coincidence that Chinese is in the same class as English and French), and secondly, it gives an erroneous interpretation of incorporation. In 21 incorporating languages, phrases and/or sentences are subject to morphologization. E. Sapir considered incorporation at the word level. Moreover, his typology highlights the tendency according to which the sentence in incorporating languages ​​is identified with the word. The word and the sentence turn into a certain new unit of language - a “word sentence”. If we accept this point of view of complete incorporation, we must part with the idea that the word and the sentence are linguistic universals, since the “word sentence” is neither one nor the other, but some new unit that is absent in non-incorporating languages. It is impossible to agree with this point of view: refusing the universality of words and sentences is absurd. Thus, incorporating languages ​​became a stumbling block for E. Sapir in the considered classifications: in his first two classifications they are simply absent, and in the third they are interpreted as languages ​​in which a word can coincide with a sentence. Meanwhile, W. Humboldt only pointed out the similarity of the incorporative sentence with the word. It consists primarily in the fact that both represent an accentuated unity. However, even in the incorporative sentence, W. Humboldt highlighted the words. E. Sapir attached the greatest importance to his fourth classification of languages. E. Sapir first divided all languages ​​into two classes: pure relational and mixed relational, and then he divided each of these classes into two groups - simple and complex. As a result, his fourth classification of languages ​​is as follows: a) simple purely relational; b) complex purely relational; c) simple mixed-relational; d) complex mixed-relational. According to E. Sapir, 1) simple purely relational languages ​​express relations in their pure form, that is, without affixal morphemes (for example, Chinese). 2) Complex purely relational languages, in which, in addition to the ability to express syntactic relations in a pure form, it is possible to change the meaning of root morphemes using affixes or internal changes (for example, Turkish, Polynesian languages). 3) Simple mixed-22 relational languages ​​express syntactic relations not only in their pure form, but also through agglutination or fusion (for example, French). 4) Complex mixed-relational languages ​​have the ability to change the meaning of root changes (for example, Latin, English) [Arakin 1979: 43]. Theoretically, the main classification of languages ​​by E. Sapir is very simple, but as soon as it comes to the author’s interpretation of the criteria underlying it, and even more so to its content concrete examples, it becomes extremely confusing. According to V.P. Danilenko, and E. Sapir’s fourth classification of languages ​​is not particularly flawless [Danilenko http://islu.irk.ru/danilenko/index-l.htm]. However, despite her obvious shortcomings, she discovered new page in this area. The merit of E. Sapir in the general typology of languages ​​is that in his main work he presented a new methodology for the general typological analysis of languages. In other words, he developed a new type of this analysis. If Humboldt's typology of languages ​​is built on a matryoshka-dichotomous basis, then Sapirov's is built on a parallel-gradual one. Classification criteria in the specified form of the general typology of languages, on the one hand, work on the material of all languages ​​independently of each other (i.e., in parallel), and on the other hand, the types of languages ​​identified using these criteria intersect with each other, so thereby dividing (grading) them into subclasses. Take, for example, the agglutinative/fusion criterion. In W. Humboldt it is relevant only in relation to agglutinative and inflectional languages, and E. Sapir extended this criterion also to isolating and incorporating languages. That is why, among isolating languages, he distinguishes, on the one hand, an agglutinative subclass (Polynesian), and on the other, their fusional subclass (Cambodian). In turn, among the incorporating languages, he distinguishes agglutinative and fusional varieties. According to the parallel-gradual principle, E. Sapir also acted when using other classification criteria. Thus, in W. Humboldt, the criterion of synthesis and analysis is relevant mainly in relation to isolating and incorporating languages ​​(the first are super-analytic, and the others are super-synthetic), while in E. Sapir this criterion is extended to all types of languages ​​- including agglutinative and fusional. That is why, for example, he regarded Bantu as an agglutinative-synthetic language, and French as a fusional-analytical one. The parallel-gradual typology of languages ​​is presented by E. Sapir in a generalized form in his final (fifth) classification of languages. It combines his fourth (by type of meaning), second (by technique) and third (by degree of synthesis) classifications. The unifying classification of languages ​​by E. Sapir allows the general typology of languages ​​to move into linguistic characterology - the second section of linguistic typology as a whole. Thus, Chinese in it is characterized in terms of meaning as a simple, purely relational language, in terms of technique - as isolating, and in terms of the degree of synthesis - as analytical. In turn, English is regarded as a complex mixed-relational, fusional and analytical language. E. Sapir managed to create a new methodological form of the general typology of languages ​​- parallel-gradual. Unlike the Humboldtian one, which V.P. Danilenko characterized it as matryoshka-dichotomous, it allows one to extend the same classification criteria to the entire corpus of known languages ​​[Danilenko http://islu.irk.ru/danilenko/index-l.htm]. The promise of Sapir's form of general typology was confirmed by its quantitative variety by J. Greenberg and his followers. General typology of languages ​​in the concept of J. Greenberg As V.P. writes. Danilenko, Joseph Greenberg, based on the gradual typology of E. Sapir, in the article “Quantitative approach to the morphological typology of language”, published in 1960, developed a technique that allows one to quantitatively measure the belonging of a particular or another language to a certain type [Danilenko http://islu.irk.ru/danilenko/index-l.htm]. It can be called a quantitative method of typological and characterological indexing. Leningrad researchers V.B. became students of J. Greenberg. Kasevich, S.Ya. Yakhontov and others. They applied the named technique to the description of eastern languages. 24 The essence of J. Greenberg’s method is to use the material of a text, for example, one hundred words written in a particular language, to determine the index of a certain typological characteristic of this language. The American typologist proposed five main criteria for such a characteristic: the degree of synthesis, the method of connection, the degree of derivation, the place of the affix in relation to the root, the type of connection (without agreement, significant word order, agreement). Each of these parameters is superimposed on the text, which makes it possible to determine the index of its syntheticity / analyticity, agglutinativity / fusionality, derivation, etc. Thus, the synthesis index is determined by the ratio of morphemes and words in the text. If it has one hundred words and one hundred morphemes, then the synthesis index is equal to one, since we determine it by dividing the number of morphemes by the number of words. But if the text has 300 morphemes and one hundred words, then the synthesis index will be equal to three. Based on similar calculations, J. Greenberg came to the conclusion that the most analytical language of the ones he studied is Vietnamese (synthesis index - 1.00), and the most synthetic is Eskimo (synthesis index - 3.72). Topic: METHODS OF TYPOLOGICAL ANALYSIS Concept of method Method is the path to reality, the path to knowledge of nature and society. Linguistics, like other sciences, creates its own methods of research and description of phenomena and facts, since the object of research is language. Language is a very complex and multifaceted social phenomenon; it has a multi-tiered structure, in which each level (phonological, morphological, syntactic, lexical) consists of its own units. At the same time, they develop their own special systems of techniques. Comparative-historical method Various states of language in the process of its development create the basis for the emergence of a special linguistic, comparative-historical method, which played a role in the development of the science of language. The basis of the method was the doctrine of the genetic relationship of a number of languages, which receives its material expression in the common sound form, as well as the provisions on changes in the phonological system, grammatical structure, and vocabulary of related languages. Comparison as the main method In contrast to the comparative historical method, which is based on the study of genetically common phenomena in related languages, typology widely uses the comparative method, the essence of which is to find and determine phenomena and facts of a number of languages ​​that have identical functions, regardless of whether the compared languages ​​are genetically related or not [Arakin 1979: 62]. The comparative method makes it possible to determine not only facts and phenomena that have similar functions in the languages ​​being compared, but also the place they occupy in their microsystem. For example, you can explore the system of linguistic means used in a number of languages ​​to form nouns with the meaning “doer”. The task of such a study is to search for the most general identical features (isomorphic) that will characterize this phenomenon. These features can be used as the basis for a typological characteristic of a language and used for a typological classification of languages, which represents one of the pressing problems of modern linguistics. The means of denoting nouns with the meaning “doer” in English and German is the suffix -er- (Arbeiter, worker), which is the core of the microsystem of means of forming nouns with the meaning “doer”. The comparative-typological method in its techniques is not much different from the comparative method, but it pursues somewhat broader goals. As noted by V.N. Yartsev, the purpose of a typological description of the languages ​​of the world is to identify the sum of similar and different features that characterize their systems; it is important not only the presence of any technique or relationship in a given language, but also the place that this linguistic fact occupies in the general scheme of distribution of techniques and relations , characteristic of the language under study [Yartseva 1967: 203-204]. “Thus, in contrast to the comparative method, the typological method deals with comparison and, on the basis of comparison, with the identification of isomorphic and allomorphic features of entire systems, subsystems and microsystems of the languages ​​under study” [Arakin 1979: 64]. Determining isomorphic features allows us to establish and select typological constants (isoglosses), which allow us to group languages ​​into two oppositional groups: 1. Languages ​​that have a given typological feature 2. Languages ​​that do not have a given typological feature. For example, if we take as a constant the category of case and the absence of a case category (and, therefore, the absence of a declension system), then all known languages ​​are divided into two typological groups: 1. Languages ​​that have a declension system 2. Languages ​​that do not have a declension system. 3. A. Makaev believes: “... for the construction of a typological grammar, it is very important to establish and select, based on the principle of a hierarchy of typological constants, or typological isoglosses, all levels of language, which together make it possible to identify the relationship of such linguistic features that are shared by all or most languages, and such features that are characteristic of only a few languages ​​(or even one language), which allows us to determine the structural appearance of the corresponding language" [Makaev 1964: 11]. In connection with the above, the problem of selecting typological characteristics arises. There is no clarity, agreement, or unity on this issue. Each level of language has its own units of measurement, therefore, typological characteristics will vary from one level to another. The choice of typological constants should be based on those properties that are characteristic of the level under consideration or its microsystem, and not imposed on it from the outside. For example, the correlation of consonants in hardness/softness and polytony, put forward by R. Jacobson as typological constants, made it possible for A.V. Isachenko distinguishes four typological groups within the Slavic languages: 1. Polytonic (adverbs of the Serbo-Croatian language); 2. monotonic languages ​​with free quantity, i.e. with a long vowel in one of the syllables (Czech, Slovak); 27 3. monotonic languages ​​with dynamic stress (Bulgarian and East Slavic languages); 4. monotonic languages ​​without prosodic load on vowel phonemes (Polish, Lusatian). Consideration of the specifics of comparative linguistics and its foundations leads to the idea that the main areas of its application are linguodidactics and translation. Within the framework of linguodidactics, comparison of languages ​​(especially native and mastered foreign) makes it possible to predict students’ mistakes, develop a typology of these errors and outline ways to prevent them through optimizing the introduction and consolidation of material. In the field of translation activities, comparison of languages ​​helps to optimize the choice of translation transformations, interpreted as recoding of information. The previously existing disputes about the “status” of the course of comparative linguistics, its greater or lesser independence in relation to the course of general linguistics, are thus without foundation, because the course of comparative linguistics faces its own tasks that do not coincide with the tasks of the generalizing, ideological course of general linguistics. In a certain sense, the study of a comparative linguistic course turns out to be nothing more than the final stage of the linguotheoretical training of a linguist teacher. Determinants theory Great importance The theory of determinants is used for the methodology of typological research and determination of universals. As you know, language is a system. The main characteristics of language as a system are: the substance that embodies this system and the pattern of connections and relationships between the elements of this system, which represent its structure. A special property of language as a system is the ability to adapt to the execution of certain statements (for adaptive, self-adjusting systems). This property ensures the best functioning of the entire system due to the ability to select both structure options and substance options depending on the speech situation. 28 This mode of functioning is the defining characteristic of the determinant system. Analysis of universals of different levels using a determinant has led to the fact that the complex is used after the simple, the two-degree function receives expression after the more important function. The theory allows, with the help of a number of implications and taking into account structural and substantive restrictions, to obtain the necessary characteristics of the language and determine its typological properties. Method of Typological Indexes In the practice of typological research, a special place is occupied by the method of indexing, or typological indices, developed by George Greenberg. The method is based on individual features that represent certain relationships and are expressed by numerical indices. Greenberg's method is called quantitative because of the quantitative indicators used. J. Greenberg carried out his calculations on a text that included 100 words according to the following parameters: 1) Degree of synthesis or total complexity of the word. If the number of morphemes in the text under study is M, and the number of words is the letter W, then the ratio of M to W is an indicator of synthesis and is called the syntheticity index. This index for analytical languages ​​will be lower than for synthetic languages. 2) Methods of communication. If the letter A denotes agglutinative constructions, and J is the number of seams between morphemes, then the ratio of A to J serves as an indicator of the degree of cohesion of the word and is called the agglutination index. J. Greenberg wrote that a language with a high agglutination index should be considered an agglutinative language, and a language with a low agglutination index should be considered fusional (inflectional). 3) the prevalence of derivational and inflectional morphemes. If R is the number of root morphemes in the text, W is the number of words in the text, then the ratio of R to W is the derivation index. If we calculate that all derivational morphemes are D, then the ratio of D to W is an indicator of the word-forming ability of the language. 29 4) the characteristic of following affixes to the root. If P are prefixes, then the ratio of P to W is an index of prefixity, i.e. the ratio of the number of prefixes to the number of words. The ratio of S to W is the suffixity index, i.e. the ratio of the number of suffixes to the number of words. If Pi is pure inflection, then the ratio of Pi to N is an index of inflection, in its pure form characterizing the inflectional capabilities of the language [Arakin 1979: 66-67]. In addition to the listed methods of typological analysis, characteristic of typology, typological studies use methods adopted for the study of other departments of linguistics. Topic: LINGUISTIC UNIVERSALS Definition of the term “linguistic universals” Linguistic universals are properties of all languages ​​or most of them. The theory of linguistic universals examines and defines: 1. General properties of all human languages, in contrast to animal languages; 2. A set of content categories expressed in language by one means or another. For example, all languages ​​express the relationship between subject and predicate, the category of evaluation, definiteness/indeterminacy, plurality; all languages ​​know the division into theme and rheme. 3. General properties of the language structures themselves, relevant to all language levels. For example, in any language there cannot be less than 10 and more than 80 phonemes. Usually their number varies from 20 to 40 (in European languages) [Linguistics 1998: 535-536]. The term “linguistic universals” has been used in linguistics since 1961, with the New York Conference on Linguistic Universals. The authors of the “Memorandum on Language Universals” J. Greenberg, C. Osgood, J. Jenkins used the term “universals of language”. Most domestic scientists, following B.A. Uspensky [Uspensky 1969], used by 30