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Il a contribué de manière importante à la typologie linguistique par ses recherches sur les universaux linguistiques, théorie selon laquelle il y aurait des caractéristiques communes syntaxiques, morphologiques ou phonétiques, à toutes les langues. Il a également élaboré une nouvelle classification des langues africaines : le groupe Niger-Congo, le groupe afro-asiatique, le groupe khoisan, le groupe chari-Nil, le groupe nilo-saharien et le groupe Niger-kordofanien[1]. Il a, de plus, proposé des regroupements plus extensifs pour les langues déjà connues tels que la famille controversée des langues amérindes.
1950 : « The patterning of root morphemes in Semitic », Word, 6:162-181.
1953 : « Historical linguistics and unwritten languages ». In Anthropology Today, éd. A. L. Kroeber, pp. 265-286. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
1954 : « A quantitative approach to the morphological typology of language ». In Method and Perspective in Anthropology, ed. R. F. Spencer, pp. 192-220. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
1954 : « Concerning inferences from linguistic to nonlinguistic data ». In Language in Culture, ed. H. Hoijer, pp. 3-18. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
1955 : Studies in African Linguistic Classification. New Haven, Conn.: Compass Press.
1957 : Essays in Linguistics. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
1963 : The Languages of Africa. Bloomington: Indiana University Press
1963 : « Some universals of grammar with particular reference to the order of meaningful elements ». In Universals of Grammar, ed. J. H. Greenberg, pp. 73-113. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.
1966 : Language Universals, With Special Reference to Feature Hierarchies. Janua Linguarum, Series Minor 59. The Hague: Mouton.
1969 : « Some methods of dynamic comparison in linguistics ». In Substance and Structure of Language, ed. J. Puhvel, pp. 147-203. Berkeley: University of California Press
1970 : « Some generalizations concerning glottalic consonants, especially implosives ». Int. J. Am. Linguist. 36:123-145.
1971 : The Indo-Pacific hypothesis. Curr. Trends Linguist. 8:808-871.
1971 : Language, Culture and Communication, Essays by Joseph Greenberg, selected and introduced by A. S. Dil. Stanford: Stanford University Press.
1972 : Numeral classifiers and substantival number: Problems in the genesis of a linguistic type. WPLU 9:1-39. Reprinted in Linguistics at the Crossroads ed. Adam Makkai. Padua: Livinia Editrice, 1977 pp. 276-300.
1974 : Language Typology: A Historical and Analytic Overview. Janua Linguarum, Series Minor 184. The Hague: Mouton.
1978 : With C. A. Ferguson and E. A. Moravcsik, eds. Universals of Human Language. 4 vols. Stanford: Stanford University Press.
1979 : Rethinking linguistics diachronically. Language 55:275-290.
1980 : « Circumfixes and typological change ». In Papers from the 4th International Conference on Historical Linguistics, ed. E. C. Traugott et al., pp. 233-241. Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins.
1986 : avec C. G. Turner II et S. Zegura. The settlement of the Americas: A comparison of the linguistic, dental and genetic evidence. Curr. Anthropol. 25:477-497.
1987 : Language in the Americas. Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press.
1990 : On Language: Selected Writings of Joseph H. Greenberg, eds. K. Denning and S. Kemmer. Stanford: Stanford University Press.
1991 : « The last stages of grammatical elements: Contractive and expansive desemanticization ». In Approaches to Grammaticalization, éd. E. Traugott and B. Heine, pp. 301-314. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
2000 : Indo-European and Its Closest Relatives: The Eurasiatic Language Family, vol. 1, Grammar. Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press.
2000 : « From first to second person: The history of Amerind *k(i) ». In Functional Approaches to Language, Culture and Cognition, éd. D. G. Lockwood, P. H. Fries, and J. E. Copeland, pp. 413-425. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
2002 : Indo-European and Its Closest Relatives: The Eurasiatic Language Family, vol. 2, Lexicon. Stanford: Stanford University Press.
2005 : Genetic Linguistics: Essays on Theory and Method, éd. W. Croft. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
(en) Blench, Roger, « Is Niger–Congo simply a branch of Nilo-Saharan? » in Fifth Nilo-Saharan Linguistics Colloquium, Nice, 24–29 August 1992: Proceedings, Robert Nicolaï et Franz Rottland (1995), 36-49, Cologne : Köppe Verlag.
(en) Lyle Campbell, « Comment on Greenberg, Turner, and Zegura », Current Anthropology, vol. 27, , p. 488
(en) Campbell, Lyle, American Indian Languages: The Historical Linguistics of Native America., New York: Oxford University Press, 1997, (ISBN0-19-509427-1).
(en) Campbell, Lyle, « Beyond the comparative method », in Historical Linguistics 2001: Selected Papers from the 15th International Conference on Historical Linguistics, Melbourne, 13-17 August 2001, Barry J. Blake, Kate Burridge et Jo Taylor.
(en) Edgar Gregersen, « Kongo-Saharan », Journal of African Languages, vol. 11, no 1, , p. 69–89
Hagège, Claude, « Sous les ailes de Greenberg et au-delà : pour un élargissement des perspectives de la typologie linguistique », in Bulletin de la Société de linguistique de Paris, 2002, tome XCVII, fasc. 1, p. 5-36
(it) Marco Merlini, La classificazione tipologica delle lingue di J.H. Greenberg : valutazione critica e saggi di applicazione, La Nuova Italia, Florence, 1985, 170 p. (ISBN88-221-0225-8)
(en) Donald A. Ringe, « A reply to Professor Greenberg », Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, vol. 137, , p. 91–109
(en) Ross, Malcolm, « Pronouns as a preliminary diagnostic for grouping Papuan languages.» in Papuan Pasts: Cultural, Linguistic and Biological Histories of Papuan-speaking Peoples, Andrew Pawley, Robert Attenborough, Robin Hide et Jack Golson, 2005, pp. 15–66. Canberra : Pacific Linguistics.
(en) Wurm, Stephen A., The Papuan Languages of Oceania., Tübingen : Gunter Narr, 1982.
