Taxonomic Linguistics

a linguistic approach that seeks to classify language phenomena. Taxonomic linguistics is based on the procedure of selecting linguistic units from a text and studying their features in terms of sequence and distribution. Taxonomic linguistics deals with classes of language constituents and with the relationships existing between these classes and the language constituents themselves.

Traditional linguistics is primarily taxonomic in its approach. The taxonomic approach is in contrast to the generative approach of generative grammar. The goal of taxonomic linguistics is sometimes regarded as the grouping of individual grammatical categories that are similar in different languages into a single generalized category, for example, the passive voice or the perfective aspect.