What are typological features in linguistics?

In linguistics, typological features refer to specific structural characteristics used to classify and compare languages based on their similarities and differences. Linguistic typology is the study of these features across languages to identify common patterns and variations.

Here are some key typological features:

1. Word Order: This refers to the typical arrangement of subject (S), verb (V), and object (O) in sentences. For example:

• SVO: English (“She eats an apple.”)
• SOV: Japanese (“She an apple eats.”)
• VSO: Arabic (“Eats she an apple.”)

2. Morphological Typology: Languages are categorized based on how they use morphemes (smallest units of meaning):

• Isolating: Minimal or no inflection (e.g., Chinese).
• Agglutinating: Clear and separable morphemes are added to words (e.g., Turkish).
• Fusional: Morphemes may convey multiple grammatical features at once (e.g., Spanish).
• Polysynthetic: Words can include many morphemes, often forming complex ideas (e.g., Inuktitut).

3. Case Marking: Refers to how languages indicate grammatical roles (subject, object) through word forms.

• Nominative-Accusative: The subject of transitive and intransitive verbs is marked the same (e.g., Latin).
• Ergative-Absolutive: The subject of a transitive verb is marked differently from the subject of an intransitive verb (e.g., Basque).

4. Phonological Typology: This deals with sound systems and how languages organize their phonemes (distinct sounds). Some key features include:

• Presence or absence of tones (e.g., Mandarin uses tones, English does not).
• Types of consonant or vowel systems (e.g., some languages have few vowel sounds while others have many).

5. Syntactic Typology: Examines sentence structure beyond word order, including:

• Head-Initial vs. Head-Final: Whether heads of phrases (like verbs in verb phrases) come first or last.
• Null-Subject Languages: Languages that allow dropping the subject in certain cases (e.g., Spanish).

6. Alignment Systems: How languages align syntactic roles across verbs. Apart from nominative-accusative and ergative-absolutive, there are more complex systems such as split ergativity.

These typological features help linguists classify languages into types and families, and understand the underlying universals and variations across human languages.