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In:Linguistic Categories, Language Description and Linguistic Typology
Edited by Luca Alfieri, Giorgio Francesco Arcodia and Paolo Ramat
[Typological Studies in Language 132] 2021
► pp. 1–34

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Chapter 1
Linguistic categories, language description and linguistic typology – An overview

 | University of Studies Guglielmo Marconi
 | Ca’ Foscari University of Venice
 | University of Pavia
Published online: 9 July 2021
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https://doi.org/10.1075/tsl.132.01alf
In this paper we propose a critical discussion of the rationale for this volume. After a short introduction (Section 1), an outline of the long-standing opposition between language particular description and universal grammar in the history of the language sciences is provided (Section 2). This opposition indeed represents the substrate on which our ‘comparative concepts debate’ is based: a summary of the debate, both in the form it had in the lingtyp mailing list (January / February 2016) and in the subsequent monographic issue of Linguistic Typology 2016, is offered in Section 3 and Section 4. Some critical consideration on the debate and on its relation with the various branches of linguistics are presented in Section 5. An overview of the papers included in the volume closes this introduction (Section 6).
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction: The rationale for this book
  • 2.Language-specific vs. universal categories, description vs. comparison – A long history made short
  • 3.The lingtyp debate and its background
  • 4.Recent insights: The Linguistic Typology debate
  • 5.Concluding remarks
  • 6.The contributions to this volume
  • Notes
  • References
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