人们通常认为类型学导源于十九世纪初由德国浪漫主义派语言学家最先提出的语言形态分类法。这种观点虽然普遍流行,但实际上不符合历史事实。事实是:语言类型学的最初探讨,不是出现在十九世纪初的德国,而是早在欧洲大陆浪漫主义传统产生之前的半个世纪就在英国出现了。英国语言类型学的创始人是杰出的社会学家和经济学家亚当·斯密(Adam Smith, It is generally accepted that typology derives from the linguistic classification that was first proposed by German Romanticist linguists in the early nineteenth century. Although this view is generally popular, but in fact does not meet the historical facts. The fact is that the initial exploration of linguistic typology did not appear in Germany at the beginning of the nineteenth century, but in Britain as early as half a century before the romanticist tradition of continental Europe emerged. The founder of English language typology is distinguished sociologist and economist Adam Smith (Adam Smith,