Georg von der Gabelentz’s typology

Abstract

Abstract This paper by Georg von der Gabelentz (1840–1893) contains the first published use of the term ‘typology’ (Typologie) in a specifically linguistic sense; this term has since become the standard name for the subfield of linguistics concerned with the structural diversity of the world’s languages. The significance of Gabelentz’ text is, however, not confined to a felicitous coinage: his essay encapsulates key aspects of the transition in linguistic scholarship from the nineteenth to the twentieth century. On the one hand, Gabelentz revisits key themes from nineteenth-century language classification in a conceptual framework that appeals to notions of ‘race’, an endeavour that was no longer fashionable even at the time he was writing. On the other hand, Gabelentz seemingly anticipates ideas and methods that would only come to the fore in twentieth-century efforts at language typology. Most notable here is his treatment of languages as ‘free organic structures’ whose ‘parts stand together in a necessary mutual configuration’, a clear statement of a central tenet of later structuralism. Gabelentz’ proposal to use statistics to capture the correlation of structures within languages similarly seems to anticipate key aspects of the methods employed in linguistic typology since the work of Joseph Greenberg (1915–2001). The introductory essay explores the historical and intellectual context of Gabelentz’ paper and its reception in linguistic scholarship.