hellog〜英語史ブログ / 2024-10-30

■ #5665. 言語類型論研究の系譜と現代の潮流 [typology][history_of_linguistics][morphology]

　Jankowsky が "The Rise of Language Typology" と題する節 (651--54) で言語類型論 (typology) の系譜を略述している．
　その淵源は，意外にも比較言語学や歴史言語学に携わっていた Friedrich von Schlegel (1772--1829) だった．彼は非歴史的な観点からの言語比較にも関心を寄せ，類型論研究への道を開いた．その流れを，兄の August von Schlegel (1767--1845) が強力に推進した．後に広く知られることになる「孤立語」「膠着語」「屈折語」という形態論に基づく言語類型論を提唱したのも，この兄の Schlegel である．
　この区分に「複総合語」を加えて改訂したのが，Wilhelm von Humboldt (1767--1835) である．さらに，19世紀から20世紀前半にかけても，この系統は根強く継承されていく．その第一人者が Edward Sapir (1884--1939) だった．
　20世紀半ば以降は，Joseph Greenberg (1915--2001) による現代的な類型論が現われ，学史上新たな段階に入った．この新しい系統は，Winfred P. Lehmann (1916--2007), Elizabeth C. Traugott (b. 1939), Bernd Heine (b. 1939), Bernard Comrie (b. 1947) らによって継承・発展され，現代に至る．この現代の潮流について，Jankowsky (653--64) の解説を追ってみよう．

   The typological work of Joseph Greenberg (1915--2001) constituted a remarkable turning point. He initially dwelled on the 'classical' morphological approach, and started out with a diachronic framework in which language genealogy and historical language development captured his interest. Early in his career he was engaged in fieldwork in Africa, which led him to experiment with classifying the languages he encountered that seemed to him to possess particularly striking and unusual typological features. In later years his attention was directed to Native American languages and, last but not least, also to the Indo-European language family. Greenberg was on the whole appreciative of the early nineteenth-century approach to language typology, which had mainly focused on the individual nature of languages and progressed from there to search for common characteristics. His extensive acquaintance with a great variety of vastly different languages was a determining factor for him to go one decisive step further. Since the large number of existing languages makes it virtually impossible to devise an evaluative system with characteristics that uniformly pertain to all natural languages, he embraced as a way out a 'general' typology, in which he discards the emphasis on holistic grammatical description in favor of a selective characterization process. As a result he succeeded in documenting the fact that there is not, and cannot be, a set of descriptive values which could be meaningfully employed as a measuring rod of all languages.
   Utilizing typology confirms the existence of language types; it cannot establish proof for the existence of one single type that would adequately describe key features shared by all languages. In choosing his strategy, Greenberg had implicitly raised the question of language universals, a topic which became a prominent item on his agenda as early as 1961 . . . .

　Greenberg は歴史言語学への関心も抱きながら，従来の形態論的類型論から抜け出して一般類型論へと進み，さらに言語普遍性への関心を深めたというわけだ．言語普遍性への関心は，一見すると歴史言語学のもつ言語の個別性への眼差しとは正反対のようにも思われるが，Greenberg のなかでは両立していたということだろう．
　今回の話題と関連する hellog 記事を挙げておく．

　・ 「#522. 形態論による言語類型」 ([2010-10-01-1])
　・ 「#2125. エルゴン，エネルゲイア，内部言語形式」 ([2015-02-20-1])
　・ 「#4692. 類型論の3つの問題，および類型論と言語変化の関係について」 ([2022-03-02-1])

　・ Jankowsky, Kurt R. "Comparative, Historical, and Typological Linguistics since the Eighteenth Century." Chapter 28 of The Oxford Handbook of the History of Linguistics. Ed. Keith Allan. Oxford: OUP, 2013. 635--54.

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