Linguistic inventory typology:A proposal for a new approach of linguistic typology

This paper proposes linguistic inventory typology as an approach to linguistic typology.The proposed approach attempts to show how linguistic inventory shapes typological features of languages.It is argued that inventory diversities among languages,such as what kinds of means a language possesses,which semantic and pragmatic categories are prominent and powerful so that their formal means can expand to the denotation of other categories,and which categories are lacking special means and have to appeal to means for other categories to express,make the cross-linguistic form-meaning correspondence more complicated than it appears.Such differences among languages are important factors underlying language types.The current approaches in typology mainly begin with semantic and pragmatic categories and focus on the examination of how these categories are denoted with formal means.Linguistic inventory typology will pay more attention to the bidirectional interaction between semantic/pragmatic categories and formal means.The impact on denotation of categories imposed by the differences in inventory and category prominence among languages will be examined.In the meantime,attention also will be paid to universals behind the inventory diversity and the relationships between category expansion and the semantic map approach.