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Language Universals

0. Introduction

When asked the question 'What may 'Universals of language refer to? the answer

will most probably be 'the features that are common to all human languages in theworld' which is true. As generally known all human beings speak and communicate

by the use of a language that cannot be found in any of the other species. There aregenerally estimated to be about 4000 to 6000 languages in the world. This numberalone gives us the idea of the immense diversity of languages of the world, but

despite their differences, there also has to be an underlying unity to human

languages. Linguistic typology is the study of the structural variation within humanlanguage with a view to establishing limits on this variation and seekingexplanations for the limits.

In this study we are going to see how the idea of language universals is put forwardby different approaches proposed by N. Chomsky and J.H. Greenberg and what

different claims have been made about these universals and at what points thesediverge. And we are going to focus on the ideas of Bernard Comrie while

explaining how the two approaches differ and especially explain and exemplify

what kind of universals are proposed by J.H. Greenberg. We are going to alsomention Greenberg's generalizations on these universals.

2.1.1- Chomskyan approach

As we have mentioned at the introduction part there are two major approaches to

language universals. The first one is the Chomskyan approach. Although our main

focus will be on Greenberg's reference of the term of language universals, weshould also mention here what this term means according to Chomsky. N.Chomsky in his theory claims that since every human being has the language

ability innately so that s/he can acquire the large amount of knowledge by hearingjust a part of it without enough experience, there is and has to be some genetic

determinacy that makes the phenomenon possible. And he claims that as N. Smith

(1999:43) mentions: "our intuitions are due in part to language principles.". Smith(1999:44) also explains the term universal according to Chomsky as:

The term 'universals' allows of many different interpretations, several of which

have been used within linguistics. At the most superficial level, but still notwithout interest, it reminds us that all human languages exploit the same

vocabulary of elements: consonants, and vowels, nouns, verbs, and clauses and soon. There is some variation from language to language: all languages have

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consonants only some have fricatives (such as "f" and "v" in English.); all of them

use nouns and verbs, only some of them have articles, adjectives, or classifiers andcomplementizers. Linguistic theory must then provide a means for describing all of

these in the form of a universal inventory of a possible elements: the inventory is

universal in the sense that it is rich enough to allow for the universe of languages,not that each language exploits all the possibilities.

From the explanation above it is easily understood that Chomsky is talking about

the universals that are common to all human beings in the initial state of thelanguage in the human mind. His main ideas of these universals are stated by R. P.Botha as:

Chomsky (1980a: 29) takes universal grammar to be ' a study of the biologically

necessary. These are genetically determined properties that are, in Chomsky's

(1980a: 28) words, 'characteristic of the human species.' As the basic statementsmaking up the theory of grammar or universal grammar, Chomskyan linguistic

universals thus express claims about biologically necessary properties of humanlanguage

2.3- Classification of Language Universals

In this section we are going to deal with different binary classifications of languageuniversals made by Chomsky.

2.3.1- Formal and Substantive Universal

This classification has been made by Chomsky. Formal Universals can be defined

as a universal of language, which pertains to the form of a grammar, can take. Themodules of the theta criterion, the head feature convention, the Binding principles

of functional coherence are all formal universals, which have been proposed in one

theory of grammar to another. On the other hand, substantive universals area anyformal object which universally present in grammars, or at least available. It can be

said that the main categories of the language forms the substantive universals.

Comrie (1981:15) states that "substantive universals delimit the class of possible

languages".

2.3.2- Implicational and Non-implicational Universals

Some universals are stated without the need of any references to any other

properties of the different languages. They do not require another property of thelanguage in order to be existent as a universal. For example, the fact that all

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languages have nouns, verbs and objects and these would be used to form a

sentence in some order is a non-implicational universal and it stands as a statementwhich has its truth value without any need of some other state to be realized. On

the other hand in the case of implicational universals there is another universal,

mostly a non-implicational one, to be realized in a particular language. It can besaid that the existence of such kind of a universal in a language presupposes or

bound to the existence of the first one. This kind of a universal is easily recognizedin the pattern due to the fact that they have the single direction conditional phrase

structure. (p => q where q=>p is invalid ) For instance if there are three color termsin a language then the firs two ones would be black and white where the third is

necessarily red. One may here ask the question that "if there is an implication and

the rule is not assigned to all the languages in the world (e.g. there are languagesthat have only two color terms black and white.) why should they exist?" whose

answer is that these are so explanatory in themselves and so regular in after getting

the first condition revealed that they cannot be ignored.

2.3.3- Absolute Universals and Tendencies

Another and last distinction between the kinds of universals is that of betweenabsolute universals and tendencies. An absolute universal is the one that has no

counter arguments in any of the world's languages. Such as ifa language has theVSO as the basic word order then it has prepositions." This is an absolute universal

because there are no languages with VSO word order and postpositions in the

world, namely it has no counter arguments. On the other hand sometimes we may

talk about some universals that are revealed in most of the languages but has,usually, a handful number of languages that do not obey this generalizations. e.g.

nearly all languages have nasal vowels. (Some Salishan languages have no nasalconsonants.) n this distinction it is again easily understood whether a universal is

absolute or it is a tendency by examining the structure of the statement. If a

universal has terms that imply a possibility like nearly all, most probably etc., then

is said to be a tendency, on the other hand if the statement lacks this kind ofpossibility telling terms and has terms like "all languages in the world etc. " it isthen an absolute universal.

2.3.4- Semantic, Phonological and Syntactic Universals

Except from the distinction that Comrie makes among the universals of language

Finegan (1994) also makes another distinction among universals which belong todifferent parts of linguistics namely, semantic universals, phonologic and syntacticuniversals. Semantic universals are the ones that govern the composition of the

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vocabulary of world's languages. e.g. body part terms, animal names and verbs of

sensory perception are of this kind. It is important to keep in mind that thesemantic universals deal with less marked, basic terms in language. For example itdeals with the existence of blue rather than the turquoise etc.

On the other hand as understood, phonological universals deal with the phonologyof the languages. For instance the fact that there exists high front unrounded vowel,

a low vowel and a high vowel at least in all languages, is this kind of a universal.Finally, there are syntactic and morphological universals as well.

Conclusion

As we have seen there are two major approaches which differ in terms of the aimsin identifying the universals and therefore whose methodology is different in many

terms of their explanation or the existence of the universals, the database they use

and the degree of abstractness they involve in the universals. What's more we havementioned what kinds of language universals occur and in what ways they are

different from each other, and why these distinctions are necessary. As a lastsection we listed some syntactic (word order based) universals proposed by

Greenberg and his generalizations on the languages depending on these universals.It is clear from all these discussions that Universals occur and play an important

role in determining the grammar model of the languages of the world, no matterwhich approach you believe in and it is also not surprising to have the idea that the

two approaches do not contrast but co-work in the sense that they examine

different parts of the subject.