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A linguistic universal is a statement that is true for all natural languages. In the Philosophy of language, a natural language (or ordinary language) is a Language that is spoken or written in phonemic-alphabetic or phonemically-related For example, All languages have nouns and verbs, or All spoken languages have consonants and vowels. For English usage of verbs see the wiki article English verbs. In Articulatory phonetics, a consonant is a Speech sound that is articulated with complete or partial closure of the upper Vocal tract, the upper vocal In Phonetics, a vowel is a Sound in spoken Language, such as English ah! or oh!, pronounced with an open Vocal tract Research in this area of linguistics is closely tied to linguistic typology, and intends to reveal information about how the human brain processes language. Linguistics is the scientific study of Language, encompassing a number of sub-fields Linguistic Typology is an international Peer-reviewed journal in the field of Linguistic typology, founded in 1997 The human brain controls the Central nervous system (CNS by way of the Cranial nerves and Spinal cord, the Peripheral nervous system (PNS A language is a dynamic set of visual auditory or tactile Symbols of Communication and the elements used to manipulate them 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. Joseph Harold Greenberg (May 28 1915 – May 7 2001 was a prominent and controversial linguist and Africanist anthropologist known for his work in both typology In Linguistics, syntax (from Ancient Greek grc συν- syn-, "together" and grc τάξις táxis, "arrangement" is the

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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 would be All languages have pronouns. In Linguistics and Grammar, a pronoun is a Pro-form that substitutes for a (including a noun phrase consisting of a single Noun) with or An implicational universal applies to languages which have 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. In linguistics grammatical number is a Grammatical category of nouns pronouns and adjective and verb agreement that expresses count distinctions (such as "one" Dual is a Grammatical number that some languages use in addition to singular and Plural.

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]. A nasal consonant (also called nasal stop or nasal continuant) is produced with a lowered velum in the mouth allowing air to escape freely through the However, most tendencies, like their universal counterparts, are implicational. For example, With overwhelmingly greater than chance frequency, languages with normal SOV order are postpositional. In Linguistic typology, Subject Object Verb (SOV is the type of languages in which the subject, object, and Verb of a sentence appear or usually In Grammar, a preposition is a Part of speech that introduces a prepositional phrase. 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. Latin ( lingua Latīna, laˈtiːna is an Italic language, historically spoken in Latium and Ancient Rome. In Grammar, a preposition is a Part of speech that introduces a prepositional phrase. 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. The Romance languages (sometimes referred to as Romanic languages, or Neolatin languages) are a branch of the Indo-European language family comprising all In Linguistic typology, subject-verb-object ( SVO) is a sentence structure where the subject comes first the Verb second and the object

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 only works one way. Languages which place relative clauses before the noun they modify again usually have SOV order, so prenominal relative clauses imply SOV. A relative clause is a Subordinate clause that modifies a Noun. On the other hand, worldwide SOV languages show little preference for prenominal relative clauses, and thus SOV implies little about the order of relative clauses. As the implication only works one way, the proposed universal is a unidirectional one.

Linguistic universals in syntax are sometimes held up as evidence for universal grammar (though epistemological arguments are more common). Universal grammar is a theory of Linguistics postulating principles of Grammar shared by all languages thought to be innate to humans ( linguistic nativism Epistemology (from Greek επιστήμη - episteme, "knowledge" + λόγος, " Logos " or theory of knowledge 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 /a/ or /ɑ/. Blowing a raspberry or strawberry or making a Bronx cheer is to make a noise signifying derision (and/or silliness made by sticking out the tongue between the lips The phoneME project is Sun Microsystems reference implementation of Java virtual machine and associated libraries of Java ME with source licensed under the GNU Also, all spoken languages have some plosives. A stop, plosive, or occlusive is a Consonant sound produced by stopping the airflow in the Vocal tract.

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 (supposed to be such since smaller creatures can only produce high pitched sounds). [2]

In semantics

In the domain of semantics, research into linguistic universals has taken place in a number of ways. Semantics is the study of meaning in communication The word derives from Greek σημαντικός ( semantikos) "significant" from 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[3]. The Natural Semantic Metalanguage (NSM is an approach to semantic analysis based on reductive paraphrase (that is breaking concepts/words down into combinations of simpler Anna Wierzbicka (born 1938 was born in Poland and is a linguist at the Australian National University. Other lines of research suggest cross-linguistic tendencies to use body part terms metaphorically as adpositions,[4] or tendencies to have morphologically simple words for cognitively salient concepts. In Grammar, a preposition is a Part of speech that introduces a prepositional phrase. [5] 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'. Tidore is a living Language spoken in various places in Indonesia, including the island of Tidore. 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'. Partonomy is a Classification based on Part -of Relation. This is not the same as Taxonomy, because that is a classification based on similarities [6]

Notes and references

Notes

  1. ^ Gbe languages like Ewe and Fon are examples of languages that lack true nasal consonants (see Gbe languages#Nasality in Gbe). Ewe (native name Ɛ̀ʋɛ̀gbè ὲβὲg͡bè is a Niger-Congo language spoken in Ghana, Togo and Benin by approximately five Fon (native name Fɔn gbè fɔ̃̄ɡ͡bè is part of the Gbe language cluster and belongs to the Volta-Niger branch of the Niger-Congo languages The Gbe languages (ɡ͡bè form a cluster of about twenty related Languages stretching across the area between eastern Ghana and western Nigeria.
  2. ^ The Sound Shape of Language, 1979.
  3. ^ see for example Goddard & Wierzbicka (1994) and Goddard (2002).
  4. ^ Heine (1997)
  5. ^ Rosch et al. (1976)
  6. ^ Wilkins (1993), Enfield et al. 2006:17.

Bibliography

External links

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