语言类型学是根据语言的结构和功能特征对语言进行研究和分类的语言学领域。它的目的是描述和解释世界语言的共同特性和结构多样性。[1]的子学科包括但不限于:定性类型学，它处理比较语言和语言内部差异的问题;数量类型学，研究世界语言结构模式的分布;解释这些分布的理论类型学;句法类型学主要研究词序、词形、语法和选择;词汇类型学研究语言词汇。
Linguistic typology is a field of linguistics that studies and classifies languages according to their structural and functional features. Its aim is to describe and explain the common properties and the structural diversity of the world's languages.[1] Its subdisciplines include, but are not limited to: qualitative typology, which deals with the issue of comparing languages and within-language variance; quantitative typology, which deals with the distribution of structural patterns in the world’s languages; theoretical typology, which explains these distributions; syntactic typology, which deals with word order, word form, word grammar and word choice; and lexical typology, which deals with language vocabulary.