%0 Journal Article %A Round, Erich %A Corbett, Greville G. %+ Linguistic and Cultural Evolution, Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History, Max Planck Society %T Comparability and measurement in typological science: The bright future for linguistics : %G eng %U https://hdl.handle.net/21.11116/0000-0007-9047-6 %R 10.1515/lingty-2020-2060 %7 2020-09-18 %D 2020 %8 25.10.2020 %* Review method: peer-reviewed %X Linguistics, and typology in particular, can have a bright future. We justify this optimism by discussing comparability from two angles. First, we take the opportunity presented by this special issue of Linguistic Typology to pause for a moment and make explicit some of the logical underpinnings of typological sciences, linguistics included, which we believe are worth reminding ourselves of. Second, we give a brief illustration of comparison, and particularly measurement, within modern typology. %K comparison; measurement; typology; substruction; linguistic description; Canonical Typology; Multivariate Typology; genitive; case; Russian %Z 1 What typological science is like 1.1 Domains, dimensions and debate: Typological sciences use them all 1.2 The productive comparison of scientific proposals 1.3 The conceivable, the possible, and explanatory linguistic theories 1.4 Grammar writing as a typological undertaking 1.5 Comparison 1.6 Canons, typologies and explanatory theories 1.7 A note on standardization 2 Measurement for comparison, within and across languages 2.1 Why measure and how 2.2 Measuring the Russian genitive 2.3 A dimension of comparison, and an extreme point of reference 2.4 Comparison by measuring relative to the canon, both cross-linguistically and internally 2.5 Additional dimensions and their canonical extremes 2.6 What canonical analysis can reveal 3 Conclusion: Linguistic typology, a typological science in good company %J Linguistic Typology %V 24 %N 3 %& 489 %P 489 - 525 %I Mouton de Gruyter %C Berlin %@ 1430-0532