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A linguistic universal is a pattern that occurs systematically across
natural language In neuropsychology, linguistics, and philosophy of language, a natural language or ordinary language is any language that has evolved naturally in humans through use and repetition without conscious planning or premeditation. Natural languag ...
s, potentially true for all of them. For example, ''All languages have
noun A noun () is a word that generally functions as the name of a specific object or set of objects, such as living creatures, places, actions, qualities, states of existence, or ideas.Example nouns for: * Organism, Living creatures (including people ...
s and verbs'', or ''If a language is spoken, it has
consonant In articulatory phonetics, a consonant is a speech sound that is articulated with complete or partial closure of the vocal tract. Examples are and pronounced with the lips; and pronounced with the front of the tongue; and pronounced ...
s and
vowel A vowel is a syllabic speech sound pronounced without any stricture in the vocal tract. Vowels are one of the two principal classes of speech sounds, the other being the consonant. Vowels vary in quality, in loudness and also in quantity (l ...
s.'' Research in this area of
linguistics Linguistics is the scientific study of human language. It is called a scientific study because it entails a comprehensive, systematic, objective, and precise analysis of all aspects of language, particularly its nature and structure. Lingu ...
is closely tied to the study of
linguistic typology Linguistic typology (or language typology) is a field of linguistics that studies and classifies languages according to their structural features to allow their comparison. Its aim is to describe and explain the structural diversity and the co ...
, and intends to reveal generalizations across languages, likely tied to
cognition Cognition refers to "the mental action or process of acquiring knowledge and understanding through thought, experience, and the senses". It encompasses all aspects of intellectual functions and processes such as: perception, attention, thoug ...
,
perception Perception () is the organization, identification, and interpretation of sensory information in order to represent and understand the presented information or environment. All perception involves signals that go through the nervous system, ...
, or other abilities of the mind. The field originates from discussions influenced by
Noam Chomsky Avram Noam Chomsky (born December 7, 1928) is an American public intellectual: a linguist, philosopher, cognitive scientist, historian, social critic, and political activist. Sometimes called "the father of modern linguistics", Chomsky is ...
's proposal of a
Universal Grammar Universal grammar (UG), in modern linguistics, is the theory of the genetic component of the language faculty, usually credited to Noam Chomsky. The basic postulate of UG is that there are innate constraints on what the grammar of a possible h ...
, but was largely pioneered by the linguist
Joseph Greenberg Joseph Harold Greenberg (May 28, 1915 – May 7, 2001) was an American linguist, known mainly for his work concerning linguistic typology and the genetic classification of languages. Life Early life and education Joseph Greenberg was born on M ...
, who derived a set of forty-five basic universals, mostly dealing with syntax, from a study of some thirty languages. Though there has been significant research into linguistic universals, in more recent time some linguists, including
Nicolas Evans Nicolas or Nicolás may refer to: People Given name * Nicolas (given name) Mononym * Nicolas (footballer, born 1999), Brazilian footballer * Nicolas (footballer, born 2000), Brazilian footballer Surname Nicolas * Dafydd Nicolas (c.1705–17 ...
and Stephen C. Levinson, have argued against the existence of absolute linguistic universals that are shared across all languages. These linguists cite problems such as
ethnocentrism Ethnocentrism in social science and anthropology—as well as in colloquial English discourse—means to apply one's own culture or ethnicity as a frame of reference to judge other cultures, practices, behaviors, beliefs, and people, instead of ...
amongst cognitive scientists, and thus linguists, as well as insufficient research into all of the world's languages in discussions related to linguistic universals, instead promoting these similarities as simply strong tendencies.


Terminology

Linguists distinguish between two kinds of universals: (opposite: , often called ) and (opposite: ). Absolute universals apply to every known language and are quite few in number; an example is ''All languages have
pronoun In linguistics and grammar, a pronoun ( abbreviated ) is a word or a group of words that one may substitute for a noun or noun phrase. Pronouns have traditionally been regarded as one of the parts of speech, but some modern theorists would n ...
s''. An implicational universal applies to languages with a particular feature that is always accompanied by another feature, such as ''If a language has
trial grammatical number In linguistics, grammatical number is a grammatical category of nouns, pronouns, adjectives and verb agreement that expresses count distinctions (such as "one", "two" or "three or more"). English and other languages present number categories of ...
, it also has dual grammatical number'', while non-implicational universals just state the existence (or non-existence) of one particular feature. Also in contrast to absolute universals are , statements that may not be true for all languages but nevertheless are far too common to be the result of chance. They also have implicational and non-implicational forms. An example of the latter would be ''The vast majority of languages have
nasal consonant In phonetics, a nasal, also called a nasal occlusive or nasal stop in contrast with an oral stop or nasalized consonant, is an occlusive consonant produced with a lowered velum, allowing air to escape freely through the nose. The vast major ...
s''. However, most tendencies, like their universal counterparts, are implicational. For example, ''With overwhelmingly greater-than-chance frequency, languages with normal SOV order are
postposition Prepositions and postpositions, together called adpositions (or broadly, in traditional grammar, simply prepositions), are a class of words used to express spatial or temporal relations (''in'', ''under'', ''towards'', ''before'') or mark various ...
al''. Strictly speaking, a tendency is not a kind of universal, but exceptions to most statements called universals can be found. For example,
Latin Latin (, or , ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally a dialect spoken in the lower Tiber area (then known as Latium) around present-day Rome, but through the power ...
is an SOV language with prepositions. Often it turns out that these exceptional languages are undergoing a shift from one type of language to another. In the case of Latin, its descendant
Romance languages The Romance languages, sometimes referred to as Latin languages or Neo-Latin languages, are the various modern languages that evolved from Vulgar Latin. They are the only extant subgroup of the Italic languages in the Indo-European language f ...
switched to SVO, which is a much more common order among prepositional languages. Universals may also be or . In a bidirectional universal two features each imply the existence of each other. For example, languages with
postposition Prepositions and postpositions, together called adpositions (or broadly, in traditional grammar, simply prepositions), are a class of words used to express spatial or temporal relations (''in'', ''under'', ''towards'', ''before'') or mark various ...
s usually have SOV order, and likewise SOV languages usually have postpositions. The implication works both ways, and thus the universal is bidirectional. By contrast, in a unidirectional universal the implication works only one way. Languages that place
relative clause A relative clause is a clause that modifies a noun or noun phraseRodney D. Huddleston, Geoffrey K. Pullum, ''A Student's Introduction to English Grammar'', CUP 2005, p. 183ff. and uses some grammatical device to indicate that one of the arguments ...
s before the noun they modify again usually have SOV order, so pre-nominal relative clauses imply SOV. On the other hand, SOV languages worldwide show little preference for pre-nominal relative clauses, and thus SOV implies little about the order of relative clauses. As the implication works only one way, the proposed universal is a unidirectional one. Linguistic universals in syntax are sometimes held up as evidence for
universal grammar Universal grammar (UG), in modern linguistics, is the theory of the genetic component of the language faculty, usually credited to Noam Chomsky. The basic postulate of UG is that there are innate constraints on what the grammar of a possible h ...
(although
epistemological Epistemology (; ), or the theory of knowledge, is the branch of philosophy concerned with knowledge. Epistemology is considered a major subfield of philosophy, along with other major subfields such as ethics, logic, and metaphysics. Episte ...
arguments are more common). Other explanations for linguistic universals have been proposed, for example, that linguistic universals tend to be properties of language that aid communication. If a language were to lack one of these properties, it has been argued, it would probably soon evolve into a language having that property.
Michael Halliday Michael Alexander Kirkwood Halliday (often M. A. K. Halliday; 13 April 1925 – 15 April 2018) was a British linguist who developed the internationally influential systemic functional linguistics (SFL) model of language. His grammatical descri ...
has argued for a distinction between and categories in resolving the matter of the existence of linguistic universals, a distinction he takes from
J.R. Firth John Rupert Firth (June 17, 1890 in Keighley, Yorkshire – December 14, 1960 in Lindfield, West Sussex), commonly known as J. R. Firth, was an English linguist and a leading figure in British linguistics during the 1950s. Education and career F ...
and
Louis Hjelmslev Louis Trolle Hjelmslev (; 3 October 189930 May 1965) was a Danish linguist whose ideas formed the basis of the Copenhagen School of linguistics. Born into an academic family (his father was the mathematician Johannes Hjelmslev), Hjelmslev studie ...
. He argues that "theoretical categories, and their inter-relations construe an abstract model of language...; they are interlocking and mutually defining". Descriptive categories, by contrast, are those set up to describe particular languages. He argues that "When people ask about 'universals', they usually mean descriptive categories that are assumed to be found in all languages. The problem is there is no mechanism for deciding how much alike descriptive categories from different languages have to be before they are said to be 'the same thing'"


Universal grammar

Noam Chomsky Avram Noam Chomsky (born December 7, 1928) is an American public intellectual: a linguist, philosopher, cognitive scientist, historian, social critic, and political activist. Sometimes called "the father of modern linguistics", Chomsky is ...
's work related to the innateness hypothesis as it pertains to our ability to rapidly learn any language without formal instruction and with limited input, or what he refers to as a
poverty of the stimulus Poverty of the stimulus (POS) is the controversial argument from linguistics that children are not exposed to rich enough data within their linguistic environments to acquire every feature of their language. This is considered evidence contrary to ...
, is what began research into linguistic universals. This led to his proposal for a shared underlying grammar structure for all languages, a concept he called ''
universal grammar Universal grammar (UG), in modern linguistics, is the theory of the genetic component of the language faculty, usually credited to Noam Chomsky. The basic postulate of UG is that there are innate constraints on what the grammar of a possible h ...
'' (UG), which he claimed must exist somewhere in the human brain prior to
language acquisition Language acquisition is the process by which humans acquire the capacity to perceive and comprehend language (in other words, gain the ability to be aware of language and to understand it), as well as to produce and use words and sentences to ...
. Chomsky defines UG as "the system of principles, conditions, and rules that are elements or properties of all human languages... by necessity." He states that UG expresses "the essence of human language," and believes that the structure-dependent rules of UG allow humans to interpret and create infinite novel grammatical sentences. Chomsky asserts that UG is the underlying connection between all languages and that the various differences between languages are all relative with respect to UG. He claims that UG is essential to our ability to learn languages, and thus uses it as evidence in a discussion of how to form a potential 'theory of learning' for how humans learn all or most of our cognitive processes throughout our lives. The discussion of Chomsky's UG, its innateness, and its connection to how humans learn language has been one of the more covered topics in linguistics studies to date. However, there is division amongst linguists between those who support Chomsky's claims of UG and those who argued against the existence of an underlying shared grammar structure that can account for all languages.


Semantics

In
semantics Semantics (from grc, σημαντικός ''sēmantikós'', "significant") is the study of reference, meaning, or truth. The term can be used to refer to subfields of several distinct disciplines, including philosophy, linguistics and compu ...
, research into linguistic universals has taken place in a number of ways. Some linguists, starting with
Gottfried Leibniz Gottfried Wilhelm (von) Leibniz . ( – 14 November 1716) was a German polymath active as a mathematician, philosopher, scientist and diplomat. He is one of the most prominent figures in both the history of philosophy and the history of mat ...
, have pursued the search for a hypothetic irreducible semantic core of all languages. A modern variant of this approach can be found in the natural semantic metalanguage of
Anna Wierzbicka Anna Wierzbicka (born 10 March 1938 in Warsaw) is a Polish linguist who is Emeritus Professor at the Australian National University, Canberra. Brought up in Poland, she graduated from Warsaw University and emigrated to Australia in 1972, where ...
and associates. See, for example, and Other lines of research suggest cross-linguistic tendencies to use body part terms metaphorically as
adposition Prepositions and postpositions, together called adpositions (or broadly, in traditional grammar, simply prepositions), are a class of words used to express spatial or temporal relations (''in'', ''under'', ''towards'', ''before'') or mark various ...
s, or tendencies to have morphologically simple words for cognitively salient concepts. The human body, being a physiological universal, provides an ideal domain for research into semantic and lexical universals. In a seminal study,
Cecil H. Brown Cecil H. Brown (born 1944) is a distinguished research professor emeritus of anthropology at Northern Illinois University. His work relates to comparative linguistics and ethnobiology. Brown attended Tulane University for his undergraduate and grad ...
(1976) proposed a number of universals in the semantics of body part terminology, including the following: in any language, there will be distinct terms for BODY, HEAD, ARM, EYES, NOSE, and MOUTH; if there is a distinct term for FOOT, there will be a distinct term for HAND; similarly, if there are terms for INDIVIDUAL TOES, then there are terms for INDIVIDUAL FINGERS. Subsequent research has shown that most of these features have to be considered cross-linguistic tendencies rather than true universals. Several languages like
Tidore Tidore ( id, Kota Tidore Kepulauan, lit. "City of Tidore Islands") is a city, island, and archipelago in the Maluku Islands of eastern Indonesia, west of the larger island of Halmahera. Part of North Maluku Province, the city includes the isla ...
and Kuuk Thaayorre lack a general term meaning 'body'. On the basis of such data it has been argued that the highest level in the
partonomy A meronomy or partonomy is a type of hierarchy that deals with part–whole relationships, in contrast to a taxonomy whose categorisation is based on discrete sets. Accordingly, the unit of meronomical classification is meron, while the unit of ...
of body part terms would be the word for 'person'.Wilkins (1993), Enfield et al. 2006:17. Some other examples of proposed linguistic universals in
semantics Semantics (from grc, σημαντικός ''sēmantikós'', "significant") is the study of reference, meaning, or truth. The term can be used to refer to subfields of several distinct disciplines, including philosophy, linguistics and compu ...
include the idea that all languages possess words with the meaning '(biological) mother' and 'you (second person singular pronoun)' as well as statistical tendencies of meanings of basic color terms in relation to the number of color terms used by a respective language. For example, ''if a languages possesses only two terms for describing color, their respective meanings will be 'black' and 'white (or perhaps 'dark' and 'light'). If a language possesses more than two color terms, then the additional terms will follow trends related to the focal colors, which are determined by the physiology of how we perceive color rather than linguistics. Thus, ''if a language possesses three color terms, the third will mean 'red', and if a language possesses four color terms, the next will mean 'yellow' or 'green'. If there are five color terms, then both 'yellow' and 'green' are added, if six, then 'blue' is added, and so on.''


Counterarguments

Nicolas Evans Nicolas or Nicolás may refer to: People Given name * Nicolas (given name) Mononym * Nicolas (footballer, born 1999), Brazilian footballer * Nicolas (footballer, born 2000), Brazilian footballer Surname Nicolas * Dafydd Nicolas (c.1705–17 ...
and Stephen C. Levinson are two linguists who have written against the existence of linguistic universals, making a particular mention towards issues with Chomsky's proposal for a
Universal Grammar Universal grammar (UG), in modern linguistics, is the theory of the genetic component of the language faculty, usually credited to Noam Chomsky. The basic postulate of UG is that there are innate constraints on what the grammar of a possible h ...
. They argue that across the 6,000-8,000 languages spoken around the world today, there are merely strong tendencies rather than universals at best. In their view, these arise primarily due to the fact that many languages are connected to one another through shared historical backgrounds or common lineage, such as group
Romance languages The Romance languages, sometimes referred to as Latin languages or Neo-Latin languages, are the various modern languages that evolved from Vulgar Latin. They are the only extant subgroup of the Italic languages in the Indo-European language f ...
in Europe that were all derived from ancient
Latin Latin (, or , ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally a dialect spoken in the lower Tiber area (then known as Latium) around present-day Rome, but through the power ...
, and therefore it can be expected that they share some core similarities. Evans and Levinson believe that linguists who have previously proposed or supported concepts associated with linguistic universals have done so "under the assumption that most languages are English-like in their structure" and only after analyzing a limited range of languages. They identify
ethnocentrism Ethnocentrism in social science and anthropology—as well as in colloquial English discourse—means to apply one's own culture or ethnicity as a frame of reference to judge other cultures, practices, behaviors, beliefs, and people, instead of ...
, the idea "that most cognitive scientists, linguists included, speak only familiar European languages, all close cousins in structure," as a possible influence towards the various issues they identify in the assertions made on linguistic universals. With regards to Chomsky's universal grammar, these linguists claim that the explanation of the structure and rules applied to UG are either false due to a lack of detail into the various constructions use when creating or interpreting a grammatical sentence, or that the theory is unfalsifiable due to the vague and oversimplified assertions made by Chomsky. Instead, Evans and Levinson highlight the vast diversity that exists amongst the many languages spoken around the world to advocate for further investigation into the many cross-linguistic variations that do exist. Their article promotes linguistic diversity by citing multiple examples of variation in how "languages can be structured at every level:
phonetic Phonetics is a branch of linguistics that studies how humans produce and perceive sounds, or in the case of sign languages, the equivalent aspects of sign. Linguists who specialize in studying the physical properties of speech are phoneticians. ...
,
phonological Phonology is the branch of linguistics that studies how languages or dialects systematically organize their sounds or, for sign languages, their constituent parts of signs. The term can also refer specifically to the sound or sign system of a ...
, morphological,
syntactic In linguistics, syntax () is the study of how words and morphemes combine to form larger units such as phrases and sentences. Central concerns of syntax include word order, grammatical relations, hierarchical sentence structure ( constituenc ...
and
semantic Semantics (from grc, σημαντικός ''sēmantikós'', "significant") is the study of reference, meaning, or truth. The term can be used to refer to subfields of several distinct disciplines, including philosophy, linguistics and comput ...
." They claim that increased understanding and acceptance of linguistic diversity over the concepts of false claims of linguistic universals, better stated to them as strong tendencies, will lead to more enlightening discoveries in the studies of human cognition.


See also

* Conservativity *
Cultural universal A cultural universal (also called an anthropological universal or human universal) is an element, pattern, trait, or institution that is common to all known human cultures worldwide. Taken together, the whole body of cultural universals is known ...
*
Greenberg's linguistic universals The American linguist Joseph Greenberg (1915–2001) proposed a set of linguistic universals based primarily on a set of 30 languages. The following list is verbatim from the list printed in the appendix of Greenberg's ''Universals of Language'' ...
*
Swadesh list The Swadesh list ("Swadesh" is pronounced ) is a classic compilation of tentatively universal concepts for the purposes of lexicostatistics. Translations of the Swadesh list into a set of languages allow researchers to quantify the interrelatedness ...


References


Sources

*Brown, Cecil H. (1976)
General principles of human anatomical partonomy and speculations on the growth of partonomic nomenclature
" ''American Ethnologist'' 3, no. 3, Folk Biology, pp. 400–424 *Comrie, Bernard (1981)
Language Universals and Linguistic Typology
'' Chicago: University of Chicago Press. *Croft, W. (2002). ''Typology and Universals''. Cambridge: Cambridge UP. 2nd ed. *Dryer, Matthew S. (1998) "Why Statistical Universals are Better Than Absolute Universals" Chicago Linguistic Society 33: The Panels, pp. 123–145. *Enfield, Nick J. & Asifa Majid & Miriam van Staden (2006) 'Cross-linguistic categorisation of the body: Introduction' (special issue of ''Language Sciences''). *Ferguson, Charles A. (1968) 'Historical background of universals research'. In: Greenberg, Ferguson, & Moravcsik, ''Universals of human languages'', pp. 7–31. *Goddard, Cliff and Wierzbicka, Anna (eds.). 1994. ''Semantic and Lexical Universals - Theory and Empirical Findings''. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins. *Goddard, Cliff (2002
"The search for the shared semantic core of all languages"
In Goddard & Wierzbicka (eds.) ''Meaning and Universal Grammar - Theory and Empirical Findings'' volume 1, pp. 5–40, Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins. *Greenberg, Joseph H. (ed.) (1963
''Universals of Language''
Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press. *Greenberg, Joseph H. (ed.) (1978a) ''Universals of Human Language'' Vol. 4: ''Syntax''. Stanford, California: Stanford University Press. *Greenberg, Joseph H. (ed.) (1978b) ''Universals of Human Language'' Vol. 3: ''Word Structure''. Stanford, California: Stanford University Press. *Heine, Bernd (1997) ''Cognitive Foundations of Grammar''. New York/Oxford: Oxford University Press. *Song, Jae Jung (2001) ''Linguistic Typology: Morphology and Syntax''. Harlow, UK: Pearson Education (Longman). *Song, Jae Jung (ed.) (2011) ''Oxford Handbook of Linguistic Typology''. Oxford: Oxford University Press. *Rosch, E. & Mervis, C.B. & Gray, W.D. & Johnson, D.M. & Boyes-Braem, P. (1976) 'Basic Objects In Natural Categories', ''Cognitive Psychology'' 8-3, 382-439. *Wilkins, David P. (1993) ‘From part to person: natural tendencies of semantic change and the search for cognates’, ''Working paper No. 23'', Cognitive Anthropology Research Group at the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics.


External links


Some Universals of Grammar with Particular Reference to the Order of Meaningful Elements
by Joseph H. Greenberg
The Universals Archive
by the University of Konstanz {{DEFAULTSORT:Linguistic Universal Linguistic typology Linguistic universals Language comparison