LANGUAGE UNIVERSALS
المؤلف:
John Field
المصدر:
Psycholinguistics
الجزء والصفحة:
P147
2025-09-08
220
LANGUAGE UNIVERSALS
Universally shared patterns of meaning which shape all lang uages (contrary to the notion of linguistic relativity). Language universals are associated with the nativist argument in language acquisition and the notion of a Universal Grammar that is part of our genetic makeup. However, they are not incompatible with a cognitivist approach, which would view languages of all types as products of the human mind and thus similar in certain features. They could also be viewed as deriving from the way the real world is structured, from similar basic needs across different societies or from a common origin for all languages.
There are two ways of establishing language universals. One, in the Chomskyan tradition, seeks to analyse a single language in depth by constructing a set of rules, then to establish the extent to which those rules can be said to apply elsewhere. The second approach takes the form of typological studies which compare a range of different languages. Greenberg (1966) examined word order and morphology in 30 languages, and identified 45 universals. He found that most languages adopt one of three word orders: by frequency, they are SOV (Subject-Object-Verb), SVO and VSO. Other patterns (VOS and OVS) are rare– suggesting a universal reluctance to place the object before the subject. This may tell us something about the needs of the listener when undertaking syntactic parsing of a sentence.
The word order adopted by a language seems to determine other important syntactic features. Thus languages with a VO order tend to use prepositions and to place prepositional phrases and adverbs of manner after the verb, while those with an OV order tend to use postpositions and to place postpositional phrases and adverbs of manner before the verb. ‘If X then Y’ findings of this kind are sometimes termed implicational universals.
See also: Linguistic relativity, Universal Grammar
الاكثر قراءة في Linguistics fields
اخر الاخبار
اخبار العتبة العباسية المقدسة
