From contrastive linguistics to linguistic typology

van der Auwera, Johan

doi:10.1075/lic.12.1.05auw

Article published In: Contrastive Linguistics and other Approaches to Language Comparison
Edited by Matthias Hüning and Barbara Schlücker
[Languages in Contrast 12:1] 2012
► pp. 69–86

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From contrastive linguistics to linguistic typology

Johan van der Auwera | University of Antwerp (Belgium)

Published online: 12 January 2012

https://doi.org/10.1075/lic.12.1.05auw

The paper looks back at Hawkins (1986), A comparative typology of English and German, and shows, on the basis of raising and human impersonal pronouns in English, Dutch and German, that contrastive linguistics can be viewed as a pilot study in typology. It also pleads for doing the contrastive linguistics of three languages rather than of two, not least because the third language can teach us something about the other two.

Keywords: human impersonal pronoun, raising, typology, semantic map, contrastive linguistics

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