At the same time it demonstrates that current ideas about language have clear historical roots, and so are not in any way “natural” or “commonsense”. None of these conditions should be taken as “facts”or historical Givens: They all depend on the adoption of a certain theoretical Viewpoint by the analyst. Characterizing language according to type, as done in the modern field of language typology, is a complex and controversial task. here we will discuss several examples of typologies that have been put forward, not in order to a precise definition of the type of which ancient Greek and Latin belong as opposed to classical Chinese, but rather to give an idea of what might be relevant parameters in comparing such very different languages. These starting conditions need to be taken into account in understanding the development of each tradition examined here. We therefore need more General Frameworks by which to explain both the distinctiveness and the commonalities between different languages and writing systems.