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Lynn Nichols

Methodology and the empirical base of typology

A significant part of the debate over the practice of “good” linguistic typology is concerned with the issue of methodology that can produce generalizations at a satisfactory depth based on a satisfactory sample size. As the articles in this collection themselves attest, there is no single goal for typology: the inventory of possible human language structures, variation within a phenomenon, the diffusion of particular phenomena, areal patterns, as well as the stability of linguistic phenomena over time are just a sampling of the concerns which typologists have had. Even given such diverse goals – where methodological differences might be take for granted as necessary – the debate over typological methodology persists.

Linguistic Typology, Walter de Gruyter

Print ISSN: 1430-0532
Volume: 11, 07/2007
Pages: 259 - 264

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