Aims:
• to teach student theory, principles and methods of language typology;
• to develop systemic thinking skills for the linguistic analysis of compared languages;
• to teach students how to transfer typological linguistic analysis into the methodology of language teaching.

Learning outcomes:
On successful completion of this course of study students should be able to:

• recognize and describe language universals;
• recognize, classify and explain similarities and differences in language units of native and foreign languages;
• display integrated skills of analyzing the languages in their current states;
• identify, prevent, or diminish the language interference during foreign language learning;
• analyse and accumulate the acquired knowledge of language typology and apply it in language teaching.

CONTENT

Comparative typology as branch of comparative linguistics. Objects of linguistic study, methodology of research. Language universals. Classification of languages. Typological classification parameters.

Typology of phonological systems. Systems of vowels and consonants in compared languages. Sound frequency. Sound clusters. Syllabic structure of words. Articulatory features. Prosody of compared languages.

Typology of morphology. Noun categories. Gender, number. Case system and declension types. Noun determiners. Adjective categories. Structural and semantic classifications. Declension. Pronoun categories. Lexical groups.

Typology of syntax. Types of syntactic relations in phrases. Word order. Simple and complex sentences. Subordinate clauses.

Typology of vocabulary. Nominative funcional means (word, phrase). Word typology. Polysemy. Synonymy and antonymy. Phraseology.