What does morphological typology study. Morphological types of languages

The concept of linguistics. Sections of linguistics.

Linguistics is the science of natural human language that studies its structure, functioning and historical development, its properties and functions.

Linguistics is the science of all the languages ​​of the world as individual representatives of the natural language. human language. Currently, there are about three to seven thousand languages ​​on earth. Exact figure it is impossible to establish, which is caused, on the one hand, by the abundance of dialects in certain languages.

Linguistics is divided into sections: general and particular.

General linguistics is divided into the following main levels of language: phonetic, morphological, lexical, syntactic.

Phonetics is the science of the sound side of the language, the subject of its study are the sounds of speech.

Lexicology is the study of the dictionary (lexicon) of a language.

Morphology is that part of the grammatical structure of a language that combines grammatical classes of words (parts of speech), grammatical (morphological) categories and forms of words belonging to these classes.

Syntax is a branch of linguistics that studies the structure of phrases and sentences and functional interaction in them various parts speech. Is an integral part grammar.

Private sciences of language study individual languages ​​and their groups. According to the object of study, the following particular sciences of language are distinguished: 1) according to separate language- Russian studies, Japanese studies, etc.; 2) by group related languages– Slavic studies, Turkology, etc.; 3) according to the geographical affiliation of languages ​​- Balkan studies, Caucasian studies, etc.

Morphological classification of languages.

Languages ​​can be combined into one typological group based on the features of their morphological structure. The morphological structure of a word is the totality of its morphemes.

A classification based on the morphological structure of a word is called morphological.

According to morphological classification languages ​​are divided into four groups: 1) root-isolating, or amorphous, 2) agglutinative, 3) inflectional, 4) incorporating, or polysynthetic.

For root isolating languages, the absence of inflection is characteristic, the stem of the word coincides with the root. Word order is of great grammatical importance. Such languages ​​include Chinese, Vietnamese, Dungan, Muong, etc. Modern English is evolving towards root isolation.

Languages ​​of the second type are called agglutinative, or agglutinating. Languages ​​of this type are characterized by a developed system of inflection, in which each grammatical meaning has its own indicator. Agglutinative languages ​​are characterized by the presence of a common type of declension for all nouns and a common type of conjugation for all verbs. The agglutinative type of languages ​​includes Turkic, Tungus-Manchurian, Finno-Ugric and some other languages, as well as the Esperanto language ( international language, international words, often understood without translation, and 16 basic grammar rules).

The third type is represented by inflectional languages. For languages of this type characterized by a developed system of inflection and the ability to convey several grammatical meanings with one indicator. The inflectional type of languages ​​includes Slavic, Baltic, Italic, some of the Indian and Iranian languages.

The fourth type includes incorporating languages. Languages ​​of this type are characterized by the combination of the whole sentence into one large compound word. Wherein grammatical indicators draw up not individual words, and the whole word-sentence as a whole.

The most developed is the morphological typology, which takes into account a number of features. Of these, the most important are: 1) the general degree of complexity of the morphological structure of the word and 2) the types of grammatical morphemes used in a given language, in particular as affixes. Both features actually appear already in the typological constructions of the 19th century, and in modern linguistics they are usually expressed by quantitative indicators, the so-called typological indices. The index method was proposed by the American linguist J. Greenberg, and then improved in the works of scientists from different countries.

The general degree of complexity of the morphological structure of a word can be expressed by the number of morphs per one word form on average. This is the so-called synthetic index, calculated by the formula M / W, where M is the number of morphs in a segment of text in a given language, and W (from the English word) is the number speech words(of usage) in the same segment.

Of course, for the calculation it is necessary to take natural and more or less typical texts in the corresponding language (usually, texts with a length of at least 100 word usages are taken). The theoretically conceivable lower limit for the synthetic index is 1: with such an index value, the number of morphs is equal to the number of word usages, i.e., each word form is one-morphemic.

In fact, there is not a single language in which each word would always coincide with a morpheme, therefore, with a sufficient length of the text, the value of the synthetic index will always be higher than one. Greenberg obtained the lowest value for Vietnamese: 1.06 (i.e., 106 morphs per 100 words). For English, he got the figure 1.68, for Sanskrit - 2.59, for one of the Eskimo languages ​​- 3.72. For the Russian language, estimated different authors, figures from 2.33 to 2.45 were obtained.

Languages ​​with an index value below 2 (in addition to Vietnamese and English, Chinese, Persian, Italian, German, Danish, etc.) are called analytical, with an index value from 2 to 3 (in addition to Russian and Sanskrit, Ancient Greek, Latin, Lithuanian, Old Church Slavonic, Czech , Polish, Yakut, Swahili, etc.) are synthetic and with an index value above 3 (in addition to Eskimo, some other Paleo-Asiatic, Amerindian, and some Caucasian languages) are polysynthetic.

From a qualitative point of view, analytical languages ​​are characterized by a tendency towards separate (analytical) expression of lexical and grammatical meanings: lexical meanings are expressed by significant words, most often not containing any grammatical morphemes, and grammatical meanings- mainly by function words and word order. In a number of analytical languages, tone oppositions are strongly developed. Affixes are used to a small extent, and in some analytical languages, the so-called isolating (Vietnamese, Khmer, ancient Chinese), there are almost none at all.

The non-single-morphemic words encountered in these languages ​​are, as a rule, complex (usually two-rooted). Since the significant word almost never carries in itself any indicators syntactic connection with other words in the sentence, it turns out to be isolated (hence the name "isolating"). Some linguists, emphasizing the role of word order in isolating languages, call them "positional".

Synthetic languages ​​are qualitatively characterized by a tendency to synthesize, to combine within one word form a lexical (sometimes a number of lexical) and one or more grammatical morphemes. These languages, therefore, use affixes quite extensively.

To an even greater extent, the stringing of a number of affixes in one word is typical of polysynthetic languages. General designation for both groups - affix languages. All of these languages ​​are characterized high development shaping, the presence of richly branched, complex shaping paradigms, built as a series of synthetic (sometimes partly analytical) forms. In addition, some polysynthetic languages ​​use incorporation to a greater or lesser extent. On this basis, which characterizes not so much the structure of the word as the structure of syntactic units, such languages ​​are called "incorporating".

Yu.S. Maslov. Introduction to Linguistics - Moscow, 1987

Typology- the branch of linguistics that deals with finding out the most general patterns different unrelated languages common origin or mutual influence. Typology seeks to identify the most likely phenomena in various languages. In the event that a certain phenomenon is revealed in a representative group of languages, it can be considered a typological pattern applicable to the language as such.

Typological analysis can be carried out at the level of sound (phonetic and phonological typology), at the level of words (morphological typology), sentences (syntactic typology) and supra-syntactic structures (typology of text or discourse).

History of typology

At the beginning of its development, typology tried to find an answer to the question of which languages ​​and on the basis of what can be classified as "more primitive", and which - as "more developed". Pretty soon it turned out that the original premise was wrong: it is impossible typological characteristics language to judge its "development" or "primitiveness". Completely different languages ​​can belong to the same type (for example, English, Chinese are superbly developed and have the richest literature- and the unwritten language of the Qing people in northern China in equally belong to isolating languages), related and roughly equally developed languages ​​may be of different types (synthetic Slavic Russian or Serbian and analytical Bulgarian, isolating English and inflectional German). Finally, the same language can change type more than once in its development: for example, the history of French can be divided into isolating Early Indo-European, inflected Late Indo-European and Latin, analytical Middle French, and practically isolating modern colloquial French.

As a result of these discoveries, linguists became disillusioned with typology until about the middle of the 20th century, when typology experienced a new birth. Today's typology does not deal with individual elements of languages, but with systems of languages ​​- phonological (a system of sounds) and grammatical.

Phonological typology

especially large practical value for comparative studies has a phonological typology. Phonological typology proceeds from the obvious premise that, despite the huge variety of world languages, all people have practically same structure speech apparatus. There are quite a number of patterns associated with this. For example, in the most different languages of the world, the phenomenon of palatalization takes place. Its essence is that the back-lingual consonant (in Russian - k, g, x), followed by the front-lingual vowel (in Russian - and, e) changes its character. Its sound becomes more forward, "softened". This phenomenon is easily explained linguotechnically: it is difficult to quickly rebuild speech apparatus from posterior lingual articulation to anterior lingual. Interestingly, palatalization usually leads to the transition of back-lingual (k, g) into affricates (double sounds like h, c, dz). The languages ​​in which palatalization takes place may not have anything in common, but, noting the similarity of alternation in Russian bake-bake, Italian amico-amici "friend-friends", Iraqi Arabic chif "how" with literary Arabic kief, one must understand what we are talking about a universal typological regularity.

In phonological typology, the concept of binary opposition is extremely important. Binary opposition - a pair of sounds that are similar in everything except for one feature by which they are opposed. For example, Russian d and t, English d and t are contrasted on the basis of deafness-voicedness: T - deaf, D - voiced. In opposition, one member is unmarked, the other is marked. The unmarked member of the opposition is the main one, its statistical weight in a given language is always greater, it is linguotechnically easier to pronounce. In this opposition, the unmarked member - T. D - is a marked member of the opposition, it is less convenient for pronunciation and is less common in the language. In certain positions, the opposition can be neutralized. For example, at the end of a word in Russian, d is pronounced as t (code = cat), that is, the marked member loses its marker.

In other languages, the opposition may be based on other features. For example, German or Chinese d and t are marked not on the basis of voiceless-voiced, but on the basis of weak-strong. d is the weak (unmarked) and t is the strong (marked) members of the opposition. That is why the German accent in Russian literature is “requested in such a way as is-sa tofo”, that Russian voiced (marked) for a German are similar to their own unmarked ones.

The typological criterion is one of the most important when testing hypotheses related to the reconstruction of a language. To date, none of the reconstructed phonetic system language cannot be accepted without checking for typological consistency. It cannot be said that all typological invariants are open, described and explained. “At the same time, already at the present time, the rich experience accumulated by the science of languages ​​allows us to establish certain constants that will hardly ever be reduced to “semi-constants”. There are languages ​​that lack syllables that begin with vowels and/or syllables that end with consonants, but there are no languages ​​that lack syllables that begin with consonants or syllables that end with vowels. There are languages ​​without fricatives, but there are no languages ​​without plosives. There are no languages ​​that have a proper plosive versus an affricate (eg /t/ - /ts/) but no fricatives (eg /s/). There are no languages ​​where labialized vowels occur front row, but there would be no labialized back vowels."

Morphological typology

To date, the most developed is the morphological typology of languages. It is based on the method of connecting morphemes (morphemic), typical for a particular language. There are two traditional typological parameters.

Type, or locus, expressions of grammatical meanings

Traditionally, analytical and synthetic types are distinguished.

• In analyticism, grammatical meanings are expressed by separate functional words, which can be independent word forms (cf. will do) and clitics (cf. I would make); locus grammatical morphemes - a separate syntactic position.
• At synthetism grammatical meanings are expressed by affixes as part of a word form, that is, they form one phonetic word with a supporting lexical root; locus grammatical morphemes - with a lexical root.

As a result, in the analytical expression of grammatical meanings, words typically consist of a small number of morphemes (in the limit - from one), in the case of synthetic - from several.

The highest degree of synthetism is called polysynthetism - this phenomenon characterizes languages ​​whose words have a number of morphemes that significantly exceeds the typological average.

Of course, the difference between synthesistism and polysynthetism is a matter of degree, there is no clear boundary. It is also a problem to define what a single phonetic word is. For example, in French, personal pronouns are traditionally considered separate words, and the orthographic rule supports this interpretation. However, in fact they are clitics or even verb affixes, and are difficult to distinguish from pronominal affixes in polysynthetic languages.

Type of morphological structure

The type of expression of grammatical meanings should not be confused with the type of morphological structure. These two parameters are partly correlated, but logically autonomous. Three types of morphological structure are traditionally distinguished:

• isolating - morphemes are maximally separated from each other;
• agglutinative - morphemes are semantically and formally separated from each other, but combined into words;
• inflectional (fusional) - both semantic and formal boundaries between morphemes are poorly distinguishable.

In the future, incorporating languages ​​were also described - their difference from inflectional ones is that the merging of morphemes occurs not at the word level, but at the sentence level.

In fact, this parameter must be considered separately for the form and for the value. So, formal agglutination- this is the absence of phonetic interpenetration between morphemes (sandhi), and semantic agglutination- expression of each semantic element by a separate morpheme. Likewise, fusion can be formal, as in the Russian word children's[d'etsk'y] and semantic (=cumulation), as in the Russian ending (inflection) "u" in the word table the grammatical meanings ‘dative case’, ‘ singular’ and, indirectly, ‘masculine’.

Isolating languages ​​actually coincide with analytical ones, since the expression of grammatical meanings by means of functional words is in reality the same as the maximum separation of morphemes from each other. However, parameters (A) and (B) should not be mixed and combined, since the other ends of these scales are independent: synthetic languages ​​can be both agglutinative and fusional.

Thus, the following types of languages ​​are usually distinguished:

• inflectional(fusion) languages- for example, Slavic or Baltic. They are characterized by the polyfunctionality of grammatical morphemes, the presence of phonetic phenomena at their junctions, phonetically unconditioned root changes, big number phonetically and semantically unmotivated types of declension and conjugation.
• Agglutinative(agglutinating) languages- for example, Turkic or Bantu languages. They are characterized by a developed system of word-formation and inflectional affixation, the absence of phonetically unconditioned variants of morphemes, a single type of declension and conjugation, grammatical unambiguity of affixes, and the absence of significant alternations.
• insulating(amorphous) languages- e.g. Chinese, Bamana, most languages South-East Asia(Miao-Yao, Tai-Kadai, etc.). They are characterized by the absence of inflection, the grammatical significance of word order, a weak opposition of significant and functional words.
• Incorporating(polysynthetic) languages- for example, Chukchi-Kamchatka or many languages North America. They are characterized by the possibility of including other members of the sentence in the verb-predicate (most often a direct object, less often the subject is not transitive verb), sometimes with an accompanying morphonological change in stems; for example, in the Chukchi language Ytlyge tekichgyn rannin‘Father brought meat’, where direct object expressed in a separate word, but Ytlygyn tekichgyretgyi lit.: ‘Father brought meat’ - in the second case, the direct object is incorporated into the verb-predicate, that is, it forms one word with it. The term "polysynthetic", however, is more often applied to such languages ​​in which the verb can agree simultaneously with several members of the sentence, for example, in the Abkhazian language i-l-zy-l-goit, literally ‘this-to-her-for-she-takes’, that is, ‘she takes it from her’.

The difference between inflection and agglutination as ways of connecting morphemes can be demonstrated using the example of the Kyrgyz agglutinative word ata-lar-ymyz-da‘father + pl. number + 1st person pl. owner number + local case’, i.e. ‘our fathers’, where each grammatical category is represented by a separate suffix, and the Russian inflectional word form of the adjective beautiful, where is the end -and I simultaneously conveys the meaning of three grammatical categories: gender (feminine), number (singular) and case (nominative). Many languages ​​occupy an intermediate position on the scale of morphological classification, for example, the languages ​​of Oceania can be characterized as amorphous-agglutinative.

History of the morphological classification of languages

The foundations of the above classification were laid by F. Schlegel, who distinguished between inflectional and non-inflectional (actually agglutinative) languages, in the spirit of the times considering the latter as less perfect in relation to the former. His brother, A.V. Schlegel, in addition to the first two, postulated a class of amorphous languages, and also introduced for inflectional languages ​​the opposition of synthetic (in which grammatical meanings are expressed inside the word by various changes in its form) and analytical (in which grammatical meanings are expressed outside words - service words, word order and intonation) system. At the same time, the concept of a word was supposed to be intuitively obvious, and no one asked the question of where the boundaries of the word go (by the middle of the 20th century it became clear that it was by no means easy to answer).

W. von Humboldt singled out the types listed above under their modern names; At the same time, he considered incorporating languages ​​as a subclass of agglutinative ones. Subsequently, a number of morphological classifications were proposed, of which the most famous are the typologies of A. Schleicher, H. Steinthal, F. Misteli, N. Fink, F. F. Fortunatov.

The most recent, well-founded and most detailed morphological classification was proposed in 1921 by E. Sapir. Subsequently, interest in the construction of morphological classifications of this type somewhat weakened.

J. Grinberg's attempt to construct a quantitative (quantitative) morphological typology has become fairly widely known. In general grammatical descriptions specific languages Humboldt typology continues to be widely used, supplemented by the concepts of analyticism and synthetism, and other parameters have shifted to the center of attention of linguistic typology as a section of linguistics structural diversity languages. On the basis of material compiled from a comparison of 30 languages ​​of different language families, Greenberg analyzed and came to the conclusion about the dependence of the order of words in a language (the so-called languages ​​SVO, SOV, etc.) and the sequence of the noun-adjective type, stress in words, etc., a total of 45 patterns (the so-called "universals", eng. universals).

Syntactic typology

The main parameters of syntactic typology are:

• strategy for coding verbal actants;
• the order of the components;
• locus of marking dependence in a phrase.

Encoding strategy for verb actants

In terms of the relationship between the verb and the noun, languages ​​are divided into:

• Active languages ​​- division of nouns into "active" and "inactive", verbs into "active" and "stative", adjectives are usually absent: modern Chinese, Guarani, Proto-Indo-European, etc.
• Nominative languages ​​- the nominative (the main case of a noun) corresponds to the subject of both transitive and intransitive verbs, and is opposed to the accusative, which corresponds to the object of transitive verbs - most modern Indo-European (including Russian), Semitic and other languages
• Ergative languages ​​- the absolutive (the main case of the noun) corresponds to the subject of the intransitive and the object of the transitive verb, and is opposed to the ergative, which corresponds to the subject of the transitive verb - North Caucasian languages, Basque, from Indo-European - Kurdish; relics of the phenomenon are available in Georgian language("narrative case" - former ergative).

There are also several less common types.

In practice, every language deviates to some extent from this strict classification. In particular, in a number of Indo-European and Semitic languages ​​(for example, in English), the morphological distinction between the nominative and the accusative has been lost (with the exception of pronouns, the system of which is rather conservative), so these cases are allocated conditionally, from the point of view of their syntactic role.

The classification of languages ​​according to syntactic types is based on the most important features semantic and formal structure of the main members of the sentence.

In languages ​​of the nominative type, the sentence is based on the opposition of the subject (the subject of the action) and the object (the object of the action). Nominative languages ​​distinguish between transitive and intransitive verbs, nominative and accusative noun, direct and indirect addition. AT verb conjugation subject-object series of personal affixes are used. This type includes Indo-European, Semitic, Dravidian, Finnish, Turkic, Mongolian, Thai, Japanese, Korean and Chinese.

In languages ​​of the ergative type, the sentence is built on the opposition not of the subject and the object, but of the so-called agentive (the producer of the action) and the factitive (the carrier of the action). In languages ​​of this type, ergative and absolute constructions are distinguished. In a sentence with a direct object, the subject is in the ergative case, and the object is in the absolute. In a sentence without an object, the subject is in the absolute case. The subject of an intransitive action coincides in form (absolute case) with the object of the transitional action. A noun in the form of the ergative case denotes, in addition to the subject of a transitive action, also an indirect object (often an instrument of action).

Dependency labeling locus

The concept of type (locus) of marking as a characteristic of a language was first formulated by Johanna Nichols in a 1986 article.

This parameter contrasts vertex marking - a method of encoding syntactic relations, in which grammatical indicators reflecting these relations are attached to the top of the syntactic group, and dependent marking, in which grammatical indicators indicating the presence of a syntactic connection are attached to the dependent. Other logical possibilities attested in various languages ​​also include double marking (exponents present at both top and dependent) and null marking (no expressed exponents). As a special strategy, variable marking can be distinguished, in which none of the above types is dominant in the language.

Contrasting between different types labeling manifests itself in various syntactic constructions. The most significant for the characteristics of the language as a whole are considered the type of marking in the possessive noun phrase and in the predication (sentence).

Languages ​​can be classified not only according to their origin from one common ancestor language, but also based on the features of their morphological structure. This classification is called morphological.

According to the morphological classification, all the languages ​​of the world are distributed among four types. The first type includes the so-called root-isolating or amorphous languages. These languages ​​are characterized by a complete or almost complete absence of inflection and, as a consequence, a very high grammatical significance of word order. Root-isolating languages ​​include Chinese, Vietnamese, Dungan, Muong, and many others. etc. Modern English is evolving towards root isolation.

The second type is inflectional or fusional languages. These include Slavic, Baltic, Italic, some of the Indian and Iranian languages. Languages ​​of this type are characterized by a developed system of inflection and the ability to convey the entire gamut of grammatical meanings with one indicator. So, for example, in the Russian word "at home" the end of the word "-a" is both a sign and male, and plural and nominative case.

Languages ​​of the third type are called agglutinative or agglutinative. These include Turkic, Tungus-Manchurian, Finno-Ugric, Kartvelian, Andaman and some other languages. The principle of agglutination is also the basis of grammar artificial language esperatno. For languages ​​of this type, as well as for inflectional languages, a developed system of inflection is characteristic, but, unlike inflectional languages, in agglutinative languages ​​each grammatical meaning has its own indicator.

For example, let's take the instrumental plural of the Komi-Permyak word "sin" (eye) - "synnezon". Here the morpheme "nez" is an indicator of the plural, and the morpheme "on" is an indicator instrumental. Agglutination, in which the morphemes that form the grammatical form of the word are after the root, is called postfiguring. Along with it, there is agglutination, which uses morphemes in front of the root - prefixes to form the grammatical form of the word. Such agglutination is called prefiguring.

Prefiguring agglutination is widespread in the Bantu languages ​​(Africa). In Swahili, for example, in the verb form anawasifu - “praises”, the prefix a- denotes a third person, - na - the present tense, and - wa - indicates that the action denoted by this verb is performed by a living being. In Georgian and other Kartvelian languages, we encounter bilateral agglutination: morphemes that form the grammatical form of a word are located on both sides of the root. So, in the Georgian verb form “vmushaobt” - “we work”, the prefix v- denotes the first person, and the suffix t is the plural.

Agglutinative languages ​​are characterized by the presence of a common type of declension for all nouns and a common type of conjugation for all verbs. In inflectional languages, on the contrary, we encounter a wide variety of types of declension and conjugation. So, in Russian there are three declensions and two conjugations, in Latin there are five declensions and four conjugations.

The fourth type is made up of incorporating or polysynthetic languages. These include the languages ​​of the Chukotka-Kamchatka family, some languages ​​of the Indians of North America. For languages ​​of this type, the combination of a whole sentence into one large compound word is characteristic. At the same time, grammatical indicators form not individual words, but the whole word-sentence as a whole.

Some analogue of incorporation in Russian can be the replacement of the sentence "I fish" with one word - "fishing". Of course, such constructions are not typical for the Russian language. They are clearly artificial. In addition, in Russian, only a simple word can be represented as a compound word. non-proprietary proposal with a personal pronoun as the subject. It is impossible to "fold" into one word the sentence "The boy is fishing" or "I am catching good fish."

In incorporating languages, any sentence can only be represented as a single compound word. So, for example, in the Chukchi language, the sentence “We guard new networks” will look like “Mytturkupregynrityrkyn”. It can be said that in incorporating languages ​​the boundary between word formation and syntax is blurred to a certain extent.

Speaking about the four morphological types of languages, we must remember that just as there is no chemically pure, unadulterated substance in nature, there is not a single completely inflectional, agglutinative, root-isolating or incorporating language. Yes, Chinese and Dungan languages, predominantly root isolating, contain some, albeit minor, elements of agglutination. There are elements of agglutination in inflectional Latin(for example, the formation of forms of the imperfect or the future first tense). And vice versa, in agglutinative Estonian we encounter elements of inflection. So, for example, in the word töötavad (work), the ending "-vad" denotes both the third person and the plural.

A.Yu. Musorin. Fundamentals of the science of language - Novosibirsk, 2004

Presentation description Morphological typology of languages ​​and morphological classification of languages ​​by slides

Plan 1. Introduction. Classification in linguistics 2. Principles of morphological classification 3. Inflectional languages ​​4. Groups of inflectional languages: . Synthetic. Analytical. Polysynthetic 5. Agglutinative languages ​​6. Root (isolating) languages ​​7. Incorporating (polysynthetic) languages ​​8. Conclusion

Classifications in linguistics Comparison as a way of cognition underlies any scientific classification. Comparative-typological linguistics deals with the comparison and subsequent classification of languages. American linguist Edward Sapir in his book "Language" wrote that "all languages ​​are different from each other, but some. . . more than others." Thus, when studying English or even Latin, we feel that "approximately the same horizon limits our views", that is, we feel a familiar way of organizing the language, at the same time learning Chinese for the majority it will be a more difficult task - all because this language does not seem to have any points of contact with Russian, similar linguistic forms. We can conclude that languages ​​are grouped according to morphological types, languages ​​with similar morphology can be combined into one type group.

In modern linguistics, the type of language is understood as a research model, a set of features that are guided by when classifying languages. By types, languages ​​can be divided based on various classifications: phonetic (vocal languages ​​- the predominance of vocalism, consonantal languages), according to the syntax of languages, word formation, inflection. Languages ​​can be combined into one typological group based on morphological similarities. In this case, the typological classification will be called morphological. It should be noted that this type of classification is the most common and well-known, therefore, the term "typological classification" and "morphological classification" are often used indiscriminately. However, it must be remembered that the first concept is wider than the second. Better than others, the morphological classification has been developed, taking into account the predominance of certain methods and means of expressing grammatical meanings.

1) The number of morphemes in a word, the presence or absence of affixes. Opposite languages ​​with affixes (Russian, Tatar, Eskimo, etc.) root (Chinese). 2) the nature of the connection between the root and affixes. There are languages ​​with fusion (inflectional) and with agglutination (agglutinative). 3) the predominance of the way of expressing grammatical meanings within the word (synthetic structure of the language) or outside it (analytical structure). Based on these principles, 4 main morphological types are distinguished: inflectional, agglutinative, root (isolating) and incorporating (polysynthetic) *. * not recognized by all Principles of morphological classification

The morphological type of languages ​​is called inflectional, in which the predominant grammatical means is inflection, connected to the stem according to the principle of fusion. Inflection is a linguistic ending, the last part of a word that changes with declension, conjugation. Internal inflection is the alternation of phonemes in the root, which serves to form the grammatical forms of the word. Fusion is a linguistic merger of morphemes, accompanied by a change in their phonemic composition at the boundaries of morphemes. Example: the morphemes "muzhik" and "-sk-" give the adjective "muzhik ky". A kind of inflection is the contraction of unstressed elements of the phrase, their merger with the core. Example: “I will come” from “with” and “I go”. Inflectional languages

Groups of inflectional languages ​​The division of languages ​​into synthetic and analytic languages ​​was proposed by August Schleicher (only for inflectional languages), then he extended it to agglutinative languages. The basis for dividing languages ​​into synthetic, analytic, and polysynthetic is essentially syntactic, so this division intersects with the morphological classification of languages, but does not coincide with it. 1) Synthetic - with a clear predominance of synthetic forms (Latin, Russian, Czech) 2) Polysynthetic - with a relative balance of synthetic and analytical forms (German, Bulgarian) 3) Analytical - with a predominance of analytical forms (French, English)

Synthetic languages ​​In synthetic languages, grammatical meanings are expressed within the word itself (affixation, internal inflection, stress, suppletivism, i.e., the formation of forms of the same words with a different root), that is, the forms of the words themselves. To express the relationship between words in a sentence, elements of the analytical system (functional words, order significant words, intonation). Morphemes included in a word in synthetic languages ​​can be combined according to the principle of agglutination, fusion, undergo positional alternations(for example, Turkic vowel harmony, likening subsequent vowels in the affixes of a word to the preceding vowels to the root of the same word). Since, in principle, a language is never typologically homogeneous, the term "synthetic languages" is applied in practice to languages ​​with sufficiently a high degree synthesis, for example, German, Russian, Turkic, Finno-Ugric, most of the Semitic-Hamitic, Indo-European (ancient), Mongolian, Tungus-Manchurian, some African (Bantu), Caucasian, Paleo-Asiatic, American Indian languages.

Analytic languages ​​are those in which grammatical meanings are mostly expressed outside of the word, in the sentence: English, French, and all isolating languages, such as Vietnamese. In these languages, the word is a transmitter lexical meaning, and grammatical meanings are transmitted separately: by word order in a sentence, function words, intonation, etc. A typical example illustrating the difference between synthetic and analytical grammatical forms: phrase in Russian - "father loves son". If you change the order of words - “the father loves the son”, then the meaning of the phrase will not change, the word “son” and the word “father” change case ending. The phrase in English is "the father loves the son". When the word order is changed to “the son loves the father”, the meaning of the phrase changes exactly the opposite - “the son loves his father”.

Polysynthetic languages ​​are languages ​​in which all members of a sentence (full incorporation) or some components of a phrase (partial incorporation) are combined into a single whole without formal indicators for each of them. Notable examples polysynthetic languages ​​- Chukchi-Kamchatka, Eskimo-Aleut and many language families North America. In the Abkhaz-Adyghe languages, with a very simple noun system, the verb system is polysynthetic.

Agglutinative languages ​​Agglutinative is the morphological type of languages ​​in which new words and word forms are formed by serial connection unambiguous standard affixes - "prilep". The main features of agglutinative languages ​​are: the relative independence of morphemes; the absence of a multi-variant system of declensions and conjugations, phonetic variation of affixes is allowed according to the law of synharmonism, and in some languages, also according to lobbyization. Examples of languages: Turkic, Finno-Ugric, Dravidian, Indonesian, Tungus-Manchurian, languages ​​of the peoples of Africa, as well as Japanese and Korean languages. They are divided according to the location of affixes into postfixal (suffixal) and prefixal. The first variety is the largest number group languages: Turkic, Finno-Ugric, etc. prefix agglutination occurs, for example, in Swahili, one of the largest languages ​​in Africa. Example: for in Kyrgyz language expressions of case values, plural values ​​and possessive values, three affixes are used, following one after another in strict sequence and, finally, a case indicator: ata - lar - ymyz - yes - “from our fathers”.

Root (isolating, amorphous) languages ​​Root is a morphological type of languages ​​in which a word is equal to a root (or 2-3 roots) and grammatical relations between words in a sentence are expressed analytically (particles, prepositions, word order). Example languages: Chinese, Vietnamese, crossed languages ​​- pidgin languages ​​Words in root languages ​​live longer independent life in a sentence than in inflectional or agglutinative languages, and grammatical categories are not expressed clearly, therefore, according to the grammatical “technique”, such languages ​​are called isolating. Example: the properties of amorphousness in the Chinese expression cha wo bu he. All four words are roots. The word cha means “tea”, wo means “I”, bu means “no”, he means “to drink”. All together means "I don't drink tea". Relationships between words in this example are expressed by word order

Incorporating (polysynthetic) languages ​​Incorporating languages ​​are a morphological type in which the boundaries between the word and syntactic units(phrase and sentence). An incorporative complex is formed as a compound word, the elements of which perform syntactic function. According to the method of agglutination, the stems of full-valued words are attached, which are similar in function to the members of the sentence. Example: the Chukchi “You-meyny-levty-pygty-rkyn” can be translated literally as “I-head-strongly-swells”, but in reality it means in Russian “I have a severe headache”. It should be noted that incorporation in such languages ​​as Chukchi, Eskimo is not the only and necessarily present principle of their grammatical organization, but exists against the background of agglutination, therefore, many linguists do not recognize the incorporating type.

Main type Technique Degree of synthesis Example A. Simple purely relational languages ​​1) Isolating 2) Isolating with agglutination Analytical Chinese, Annam (Vietnamese), Ewe, Tibetan B. Complex purely relational languages ​​1) Agglutinating, isolating Analytical Polynesian 2) Agglutinating Synthetic Turkish 3 ) Fusion-agglutinating Synthetic Classical Tibetan 4) Symbolic Analytic Shilluk C. Simple mixed-relational languages ​​1) Agglutinating Synthetic Bantu 2) Fusional Analytical French B. Complex mixed-relational languages ​​1) Agglutinating Polysynthetic Nootka 2) Fusional Analytical English, Latin, Greek 3) Fusion, symbolic Slightly synthetic Sanskrit 4) Symbolic-fusion Synthetic Semitic. The classification of languages ​​is very abstract, ideal system, since "pure" languages ​​that would belong to only one morphological type do not exist. The classification of languages ​​according to E. Sapir is a confirmation of this fact.

The Russian language as an inflectional language of a synthetic structure Latin and ancient Greek have always been considered as the standard of inflectional languages. Of the living languages, it is Russian (like some other Slavic languages) is considered as a typical representative of this morphological type. Paradigm quality adjective includes 101 inflectional forms, the system of tenses of verbs is also characterized by inflection. But, being a language of a synthetic structure, the Russian language has a certain number of analytical forms of the name and the verb. Analytical verb forms future tense imperfect form and subjunctive mood, compound degrees comparison of adjectives. However, inflections do not disappear here either, forming analytic-synthetic word forms. Example: ending with the meaning of gender, number and case of the function word "most" - an indicator superlatives at the adjective (the strongest, the strongest). Purely analytical forms are rare in Russian. You can also find elements of an isolating type in Russian: adverbs, indeclinable nouns, verb forms denoting instantaneous action: “pryg”, “shmyak”. However, they still differ significantly from words in languages ​​of an isolating type: if a noun in Russian has nothing but a root, it means null ending, then “jump” and “shmyak” are perceived by native speakers as truncated “jump”, “shmyak”. Thus, the presence in the Russian language of signs of different morphological types does not cancel, but only emphasizes its characterization as a language with pronounced inflection and synthetism.

Conclusion Turning to the morphological classification of languages ​​allows us to see the diversity of the device of the languages ​​of the world. There is no language that would belong to only one of the distinguished types: inflectional, agglutinative, root, or incorporating. In each of the languages ​​that have ever existed, elements of several of the 4 systems are presented, which once again proves the mobility, "liveness" of such a system as language.