Book contents
- The Cambridge Handbook of Comparative Syntax
- Cambridge Handbooks In Language And Linguistics
- The Cambridge Handbook of Comparative Syntax
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Figures
- Tables
- Contributors
- Acknowledgments
- 1 The Comparative Syntactic Enterprise
- Part I Comparative Syntax: Theory, Methodology, and Data Collection
- 2 Theoretical Approaches to Comparative Syntax
- 3 Databases for Comparative Syntactic Research
- 4 Quantitative Approaches to Syntactic Variation
- 5 Computational Approaches to Syntactic Variation
- 6 Comparative Syntax from Formal and Functional Perspectives
- 7 Micro-Comparative Syntax, Dialectology, and Sociolinguistics
- 8 Change
- 9 Universal and Language-Specific Properties of Language
- Part II Comparative Syntax: Building Blocks and Combinatorial Properties
- Part III Comparative Syntax: Dependency Relations and Dependency Marking
- Part IV Comparative Syntax: Interfaces
- Index
- References
6 - Comparative Syntax from Formal and Functional Perspectives
from Part I - Comparative Syntax: Theory, Methodology, and Data Collection
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 January 2026
Book contents
- The Cambridge Handbook of Comparative Syntax
- Cambridge Handbooks In Language And Linguistics
- The Cambridge Handbook of Comparative Syntax
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Figures
- Tables
- Contributors
- Acknowledgments
- 1 The Comparative Syntactic Enterprise
- Part I Comparative Syntax: Theory, Methodology, and Data Collection
- 2 Theoretical Approaches to Comparative Syntax
- 3 Databases for Comparative Syntactic Research
- 4 Quantitative Approaches to Syntactic Variation
- 5 Computational Approaches to Syntactic Variation
- 6 Comparative Syntax from Formal and Functional Perspectives
- 7 Micro-Comparative Syntax, Dialectology, and Sociolinguistics
- 8 Change
- 9 Universal and Language-Specific Properties of Language
- Part II Comparative Syntax: Building Blocks and Combinatorial Properties
- Part III Comparative Syntax: Dependency Relations and Dependency Marking
- Part IV Comparative Syntax: Interfaces
- Index
- References
Summary
This chapter presents and analyzes the main goals of linguistic typology and explores its relation to formal comparative syntax. It shows that typology can be understood in two different ways, as a subfield and as a methodology of comparative linguistic study. Understood in the former sense, a typological approach is complementary to a formal one; understood in the latter sense, a typological approach is inherent in formal comparative syntax. The chapter discusses critical differences between the subfield of functional typology and the subfield of formal comparative syntax and explains the difficulties on the way to their convergence. It uses studies of word order and case to compare the two approaches.
Information
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- The Cambridge Handbook of Comparative Syntax , pp. 169 - 202Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2025
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