Main function of any language is to be mean of communication, but in order to be able to communicate we have to set a system of rubrics/labels/markers first of all, that’s why main function of any language is to rubricate/to structurize reality. Structural level/grammar is the mean that rubricates reality and so it is much more important than lexicon. I suppose we can even say that structure appeared before languages of modern type, i.e.: when ancestors of Homo sapiens developed possibility of free combination of two signals inside one “utterance” it already was primitive form of modern language. Structure is something alike bottle while lexicon is liquid/matter which is inside the bottle; in a bottle can be put wine, water, gasoline or even sand but the bottle always remains bottle.
To those who think that structure is not important I can give the following example taken from Japanese language: Gakusei ha essei wo gugutte purinto shita. “Having googled an essay student printed [it]”. What makes this phrase be a Japanese phrase? “Japanese” words gakusei “student” (a word of Chinese origin), essei “essay” (a word of English origin), purinto “print” or, may be, “Japanese” verb guguru “to google”? One can probably say that this example is very special since it was made without so called “basic lexicon”; however, such words are of everyday use and also, as it has been noted above, it is impossible to distinguish so called “basic lexicon” since all lexis is culturally determined and borrowings can be even inside of so called “basic lexis”. Any language can potentially accept thousands of foreign words and still remains the same language until its structure remains the same.
All the above considered facts mean that comparison of lexis should not be base of genetic classification of languages and any researches about genetic affiliation should be based on comparative analysis of structures/grammar, i.e.: analysis and comparison of grammatical systems of compared languages is completely obligatory procedure to prove/test some hypothesis of genetic affiliation of a language. That’s why in current monograph two powerful typological tools are represented.
2. Prefixation Ability Index (PAI) allows us to see whether two languages can potentially be genetically related
2.1. PAI Method
2.1.1. PAI method background
A. P. Volodin pointed on the fact that all languages can be subdivided into two sets by the parameter of presence/absence of prefixation: one group has prefixation and the other has not (Volodin 1997: 9).
The first set was conventionally named set of “American type” linear model of word form7.
According to Volodin American type linear model of word form is the following:
(p) + (r) + R + (s).
The second one was conventionally named set of “Altaiс type” linear model of word form8.
According to Volodin it is the following:
(r) + R + (s)
(p – prefix, s – suffix, R – main root, r – incorporated root; brackets mean that corresponding element can be absent or can be represented several times inside a particular form).
Volodin supposed that there was a border between two sets and that languages belonging to the same set demonstrate certain structural similarities. Also he supposed that typological similarities could probably tell us something about possible routes of ethnic migrations.
2.1.2. PAI hypothesis development
Having got Volodin’s notion about two types of linear model of word form, I for quite a long time thought that there was a pretty strict water parting between languages that have prefixation and those that have not. For instance, I seriously thought that Japanese had no prefixes and tried to consider all prefixes of Japanese as variations of certain roots, i.e. as components of compounds; until one day I finally realized that so called “variations of roots” actually could never be placed in nuclear position and so they all should be considered as true prefixes, so strict dichotomy was broken and I had to elaborate new theory.