How typology allows for a new analysis of verb phrase in Burmese

Description, classification, diversity and universality of languages are the key terms of linguistic typology, which first aims at answering the following question: what do languages have in common and in what ways do they differ?1 In other words, typology is concerned with finding properties that are shared by languages (invariants in Lazard terms), and has to do with cross-linguistic comparison. Its first task is therefore to describe languages in terms of pre-established features, leading to a classification of languages into different structural types according to the affinities that emerge from the descriptions. Typologists are also concern with the areal [or geographical] distribution of structural features among the world’s languages.