Linguistic Universals/ for M.Ed

Linguistic Universals

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A linguistic universal is a statement that is true for all natural languages. For example, All languages have nouns and verbs, or All spoken languages have consonants and vowels. Research in this area of linguistics is closely tied to linguistic typology, and intends to reveal information about how the human brain processes language. The field was largely pioneered by the linguist Joseph Greenberg, who from a set of some thirty languages derived a set of basic universals, mostly dealing with syntax.

Terminology
Linguists distinguish between two kinds of universals: absolute (opposite: statistical, often called tendencies) and implicational (opposite non-implicational). Absolute universals apply to every known language and are quite few in number; an example is All languages have pronouns. 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, 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 tendencies, 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 consonants[1]. However, most tendencies, like their universal counterparts, are implicational. For example, With overwhelmingly greater than chance frequency, languages with normal SOV order are postpositional. Strictly speaking, a tendency is not a kind of universal, but exceptions to most statements called universals can be found. For example, Latin 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 switched to SVO, which is a much more common order among prepositional languages.

Universals may also be bidirectional or unidirectional. In a bidirectional universal two features each imply the existence of each other. For example, languages with postpositions 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 clauses before the noun they modify again usually have SOV order, so pre-nominal relative clauses imply SOV. On the other hand, worldwide SOV languages 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 (although epistemological arguments are more common). Other explanations for linguistic universals have been proposed, for example, that linguistic universals tend to be properties of language which 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.

In phonology

Some linguistic universals (or tendencies) may be phonologically based. For example, the raspberry sound is never used phonemically within any human language, while there is no known spoken language without an open vowel such as /a/ or /ɑ/. All spoken languages also have some plosives.According to Roman Jakobson and Linda Waugh, numerous studies have proved that high-pitched sounds (such as /i/, as in poquito (Spanish), kitty (English), maomi (Mandarin)) frequently refer to smaller beings or objects (hypothesized to be such because smaller creatures can produce only high-pitched sounds).

In semantics

In the domain of semantics, research into linguistic universals has taken place in a number of ways. Some linguists, starting with Leibniz, 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 Wierzbicka and associates. Other lines of research suggest cross-linguistic tendencies to use body part terms metaphorically as adpositions, 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 (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, for example Tidore 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 of body part terms would be the word for 'person'.

Notes and references

Nearly five thousand languages are spoken in the world today. They seem to be quite different, but still, many of them show similar principles, such as word order. For example, in languages such as English, French, and Italian, the words of the clause take the order of first the subject, then the verb, and then the direct object.There even exist basic patterns or principles that are shared by all languages. These patterns are called universals.When the same principles are shared by several languages, we speak of language types. There are several examples for universals.
.1 Semantic universals
There are semantic categories that are shared by all cultures and refered to by all languages - these are called semantic universals. There are many examples of semantic universals. Let's discuss two of them:
One semantic universal regards our notion of color. There exist eleven basic color terms:
black, white, red, green, blue, yellow, brown, purple, pink, orange, and grey.
The pattern that all languages universally abide by, is that they do not entertain a notion of a color term outside of that range. This means, any imaginable color is conceived of as a mixture, shade, or subcategory of one of these eleven basic color terms.As a result, one way of classifying languages is by color terms. The eleven color terms are not in usage equally among the languages on Earth. Not all languages have all basic color terms. Some have two, some three, and some four. Others have five, six, or seven, and some have eight to eleven.Those with two color terms always have black and white,those with three black, white, and red,and those with more have additional basic color terms according to the order in the list given above. This is a universal pattern. The languages which have the same basic color terms in common belong to the same language type. Hence, we find seven classes of languages according to this scheme.
Another semantic universal is the case of pronouns. Think of what it is you do when you talk to someone about yourself. There is always the "I", representing you as the speaker, and the "you", meaning the addressee. You could not possibly do without that, and neither could a speaker of any other language on earth. Again, we find a universal pattern here. Whenever you do not talk about yourself as a person, but as a member of a group, you use the plural "we". English is restricted to these two classes of pronouns: singular and plural, each in the first, second, and third person. All languages that evince this structure are grouped into one language type. There are other languages that make use of even more pronouns. In some languages, it is possible to address two people with a pronoun that specifically indicates not just their being plural, but also their being 'two' people; this is then the dual pronoun.Other examples are languages that have pronouns to refer to the speaker and the addressee together, called inclusive pronouns. Exclusive pronouns refer to the speaker together with people other than the addressee. However, these are not among the European languages.
2. Phonological universals
Different languages may have very different sets of vowels. If you are familiar with a few foreign languages, you may find it difficult to believe there are universal rules governing the distribution of vowels, but they do exist. Remember our example of basic color terms: A similar pattern could be drawn on the basis of the vowel system. Languages with few vowels always have the same set of vowel types. And if a language has more vowels, it is always the same type of vowel that is added to the set. These vowels may not always sound exactly the same, but they are always created at the same location in our vocal apparatus.
3. Syntactic universals
Remember the word order of English I mentioned above. Hmhm, you say: that cannot be a universal rule, since you know other sentences from English and possibly from other languages which do not follow this order. You are right, but the order subject, verb, object (SVO) may be defined as the basic order of English sentences. In other languages there are different "basic" orders, such as Japanese (SOV) or Tongan (VSO), a Polynesian language. After an extensive study, one can define two different sets of basic orders that languages follow: First
SVO, VSO, SOV
and second
VOS, OVS, OSV.
What is the difference? In the first set the subject precedes the object, in the second set it follows the object. Since the first set is the one which applies to the basic structures of far more languages than the second one does, the universal rule is that there is an overwhelming tendency for the subject of a sentence to precede the direct object among the languages of the world.
4 Absolute universals - universal tendencies; implicational - nonimplicational universals
Of course, not all universals can be found in all languages. With so many tongues spoken, it would be hard not to find any exceptions. Most languages have not even been the subject of extensive research as of yet. However, some rules appear without exception in the languages which have been studied so far. We call these absolute universals. If there are minor exceptions to the rule, we speak of universal tendencies or relative universals. In saying this, we take for granted that exceptions may be found in future surveys among languages which have remained unexplored up to the present day.Sometimes a universal holds only if a particular condition of the language structure is fulfilled. These universals are called implicational. Universals which can be stated without a condition are called nonimplicational. In other words, whenever a rule "If ... then ..." is valid, the universal appears in the structure of the respective language.There are thus four types of universals: implicational absolute universals, implicational relative universals, nonimplicational absolute universals, and nonimplicational relative universals. The final determination of which type a universal belongs to is dependent on intensive field research