Synchrony, diachrony and Greenberg's state-process model: From the viewpoint of typological characterization

Abstract

After a brief survey of the history of diachronic typology, the author focuses his attention on the typological methods applied to historical comparative linguistics. Then some basic issues of Greenberg's state-process model are examined as a possible model for diachronic typology. Morphological and word-order typology are used for the illustration of the author's statements and comments.

Keywords

• methods of diachronic typology
• intragenetic and intergenetic comparative linguistics
• state-process model