Difference between revisions of "Typological Features Template"

Revision as of 18:24, 20 July 2014

The following template allows you to create a short grammatical sketch of your language. To work with such a templates might not only be useful for students of linguistics and fieldworkers investigating so far little explored languages, but also for linguists in general and people interested in less-described languages. The templates cover phonology and morpho-syntax information. Still, the idea is not that all areas must be covered and all fields must be filled in. The templates can be used in a much more exploratory mode.

The Typological Features Template has a typological orientation, and can be used with profit by everyone who had basic linguistic training. Non-native speakers of the described language and fieldworkers may want to work with the template because it provides a first indication of the scope of the phenomena that could (and perhaps should be) studied. The templates also might be useful for native speakers of a minority or less-studied language in order to describing their native languages in linguistic terms.

The Typological Features Template has a tabular form, which indicates that the expected descriptions are intended to be rather short. The idea is that a filled template gives a easy to grasp first overview over a language. For templates place on this wiki, it is quite important that they contains lots of references to ongoing work on the described language, or, if available literature that can be useful to readers interested in a more in-depth view.

Essential is that certain claims made about the described language are supported by annotated data from the TypeCraft database.

Finally, the format of the template is not written in stone. It is very much work in progress. We are thankful for suggestions. Please use the discussion page for this page to leave your comment.

You will find quite a few templates that have been started, but then were abandoned on TypeCraft. Feel free to adopt templates that have not been signed by other TypeCraft users. Please sign your contribution, or leave your info on the discussion pages of these templates.

Feature	Description
Phonological Features	The following fields describe the sound inventory of [your language]
Vowel inventory
Vowel harmony
Consonant inventory
Tone	Suggestion: If your language is a tone language describe which tones are used; indicate whether your language uses lexical or grammatical tone.
Syllable Structure
Morpho-syntactic Features	In the following fields you describe some of the morpho-syntactic parameters of [your language]
Basic properties	[Your language] could be an isolating language (not (or nearly not) making use of morphology, agglutinative, such as the Bantu languages of Africa, or synthetic, such as the Saami languages of Scandinavia, or even polysynthetic such as Greenlandic. In this field you classify [your language] according to these parameters if possible.
special features	Linguists have distinguished between head- and dependent-marking languages. Semitic languages are head marking languages; it is the head of the noun phrases that needs to have a special form when followed by a dependent noun; in the Germanic languages it is the head of the verb phrase that expresses person-number features of its subject. Grammatical dependencies on the other hand are in some of the Germanic languages expressed on the dependent noun phrases in form of case. [Your language] might be both, head- and dependent-marking, depending on the category of speech and or the type of feature expressed. This is what you can describe in this field.
Nominal Phrases	In the following fields we aim for a description of some of the basic morpho-syntactic properties of nominal constituents
syntactic structure	In this field you describe the linear order of elements in the noun phrase
nominal modification	In this field you indicate the basic types of nominal modifiers (adjectives, relative clauses, adpositions...)
nominal specification	In this field you list the nominal specifiers. Does [your language] have determiners, demonstratives (deixis), numerals, quantifiers. Are there affixes expressing reference, deixis.
possession	In this field you describe how possession is expressed (for example, syntactically or by use of prepositions, through juxtaposition or morphologically) Does [your language] feature possessive pronouns?
pronominal system	In this field you indicate if [your language] has free pronoun forms? Are pronouns marked for their grammatical function (object versus subject pronouns)? Does your language have bound pronouns (affixes) or pronoun doubling? Are reflexives expressed by pronouns?
Verbal Phrases	In the following fields serve for the description of some of the basic morpho-syntactic properties of verbal constituents
word order	In this field you indicate the basic word order of your language (SOV, SOV ...)
TAM	In this field you indicate which tense and/or aspects are morphologically or tonally marked; does [your language] make use of periphrastic tense or aspect constructions?
infinitival forms	In this field you indicate if [your language] makes use of an infinitive marker? How many infinitival forms does your language have?
verbal constructions	In this field you indicate if [your language] has ditransitive constructions, serial verb constructions or complex verb forms composed of several verbs. Does your language have so called light verbs, perhaps only used to indicate a certain tense or aspect?
Adpositions	In this field you indicate if [your language [makes use of prepositions or postpositions. Does your language have spatial nouns? Does your language use adpositions or particles to indicate grammatical relations between the verb and a nominal argument?
Complementation	In this field you describe complementation strategies. Does [your language] make use of complementizers?
Special Properties of [your language]	In this field you should mention properties of [your language] which do not fit into any of the other categories mentioned in this template
Short Bibliography

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-The following template allows you to create a short grammatical overview for your language. To work with such a templates might not only be useful for students of linguistics and fieldworkers working on so far little explored languages,  but for linguists in general who are interested in less-described languages. The template covers phonology and  morpho-syntax, but the idea is not that all fields must be filled. The template as as typological orientation and can be used with profit by everyone who had basic linguistic training. It is useful to start on a typological feature template for non-native speakers of the described language and fieldworkers since it gives to some extent an indication of the scope of phenomena that could (and perhaps need to be studied) but it is also useful as a tool for native speakers of a minority or less-studied language to describing their native languages in linguistic terms.
+The following template allows you to create a short grammatical sketch of your language. To work with such a templates might not only be useful for students of linguistics and fieldworkers investigating so far little explored languages,  but also for linguists in general and people interested in less-described languages. The templates cover phonology and  morpho-syntax information. Still, the idea is not that all areas must be covered and all fields must be filled in. The templates can be used in a much more exploratory mode.
-The template has a tabular form which already makes clear that the description intended will be rather limited in depth. The idea is to give a easy to grasp first overview over a language. Given the style and purpose of the template it is quite important that many referen
+The Typological Features Template has a typological orientation, and can be used with profit by everyone who had basic linguistic training. Non-native speakers of the described language and fieldworkers may want to work with the template because it provides a first indication of the scope of the phenomena that could (and perhaps should be) studied. The templates also might be useful for native speakers of a minority or less-studied language in order to describing their native languages in linguistic terms.
-Second, the glosses and translations for examples are given in Spanish. This practice is simply to make the difference between the language data and the translations clear. In a real grammar sketch the text, glosses and translations would probably all be in one language, while the language data would be in another, namely the language being described. This sample sketch has the awkward feature of employing the described language in the description itself.
-Finally, this is very much a "work in progress." Please have patience, and just use this sketch as a general reference. It is not in any sense of the word "definitive."
+The Typological Features Template has a tabular form, which indicates that the expected descriptions are intended to be rather short. The idea is that a filled template gives a easy to grasp first overview over a language. For templates place on this wiki, it is quite important that they contains lots of references to ongoing work on the described language, or, if available literature that can be useful to readers interested in a more in-depth view.
-Most grammatical descriptions will be more detailed than this sample sketch. Also, any grammatical description will include topics not dealt with in this sample, and may exclude some of the topics represented here. With this proviso in mind, it is also true that if the information that appears in this sample were available with respect to every language on earth, the field of descriptive linguistics would have accomplished a substantial portion of its task.
+Essential is that certain claims made about the described language are supported by annotated data from the TypeCraft database.
+Finally, the format of the template is not written in stone. It is very much work in progress. We are thankful for suggestions. Please use the discussion page for this page to leave your comment.
+You will find quite a few templates that have been started, but then were abandoned on TypeCraft. Feel free to adopt templates that have not been signed by other TypeCraft users. Please sign your contribution, or leave your info on the discussion pages of these templates.
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