Marcin Kilarski Polish-English contrastive grammar 1

Types and analysis of language universals

Review for Quiz #2:

> know the basic terms used in genetic classification: language family/group, family tree model, parent/daughter/sister
language, phylum, proto-language, cognate, language isolate
> be able to distinguish between a language and a dialect
> know the assumptions behind the comparative method and genetic classification
> be able to classify all the Indo-European languages spoken in Europe, and those non-Indo-European languages
spoken in Europe given on the handout

Note: There is one handout for two classes: on types of universals (sections 1-5) and analysis of universals
(sections 6-9)

1. Introduction

> focus either on similarities between languages and limits on variation (universals) or differences between languages
and range of variation (typology)

2. Universals classified with respect to the generalised entity

a) substantive
> these are categories, or “building blocks”, that we use in a description of language, present in all (relevant) languages,
e.g. noun, vowel, distinctive features, subject

b) formal
> abstract conditions/statements that deal with the organisation of grammar, e.g. rules and transformations (as in
passive)

3. Universals classified with respect to their type (form)

a) implicational
> implicational universals deal with relationships between properties. They have the form ‘if X, then Y’, where the
presence of property Y requires the presence of property X, as in: “If dominant order is VSO, then adpositions precede
their NPs (i.e. they are prepositions)”

VSO => prepositions (Welsh) p => q

SVO => prepositions (Polish) -p => q
SOV => postpositions (Japanese) -p => -q
VSO => postpositions (none) p => -q

> implications do not have to be stated as ‘if X, then Y’; e.g., the three following statements are equivalent:
> VO languages tend to have complex syllable structure.
> IF VO is a basic word order, THEN there is complex syllable structure.
> VO => complex syllable structure

b) non-implicational, i.e. those which do not involve an implication

4. Universals classified with respect to their quality (generality)

a) absolute
Statements that hold for all (relevant) languages, e.g., implicational (if VSO, then Prep) (but see below); and non-
implicational (all languages have vowels)

b) statistical/relative/nonabsolute
Statements that hold for a statistically significant subset of (relevant) languages, e.g.,
> implicational: If SOV, then probably postpositions; also, there are exceptions to the above “VSO => prepositions”
universal, so it has been described as statistical – see the table below for details
> non-implicational: substantive: nearly all languages have nasal consonants; formal: in human languages there is a
tendency towards structure dependency, though individual exceptions do occur (e.g. in Serbo-Croatian clitics must
appear in sentence second position, which is structure independent)
Marcin Kilarski Polish-English contrastive grammar 2

Number:! 55!
Original:! Languages with dominant VSO order are always prepositional.!
Standardized:! IF dominant order is VSO, THEN adpositions precede their NPs (i.e. they are prepositions).!
Formula:! VSO => prepositions!
Keywords:! order, VSO, preposition !
Domain:! syntax!
Type:! implication!
Status:! achronic!
Quality:! absolute (for Greenberg), statistical (for Dryer)!
Basis:! sample of 30 languages in Greenberg 1963; sample of 434 languages in Dryer 1992!
Source:! Greenberg 1963: 78, #3; Dryer 1992: 83!
1. Iraqw (Cushitic, Afro-Asiatic), Khamti (Tai, Daic), standard Persian (Iranian, IE), Amharic
(Semitic, Afro-Asiatic) (Greenberg 1963: 105, ftn. 8); Papago (Tepiman, Uto-Aztecan) (Greenberg
1963: 107, add. note)[but see comment 3]; Cora (Corachol, Uto-Aztecan) and Tepehuán (Tepiman,
Counterexamples:!
Uto-Aztecan) are both VSO but have postpositions; Tetelcingo Aztec (Uto-Aztecan) [but see
comment 4], also VSO, has both prepositions and postpositions (Pickett 1983: 539).
[there are six other counterexamples]!
Comments:! …!

source: Universals Archive

5. Other classifications:

> with respect to domain (syntax, inflection, discourse, etc.)

> with respect to generality: 1) conditional, i.e. relevant only to languages with a given property, as in subsets of
substantive universals; vs. 2) unconditional, i.e. relevant to all languages, as in substantive universals which appear in
all languages
> with respect to status: achronic, which do not directly relate to language change (e.g., VO languages tend to have
complex syllable structure ) vs. diachronic (e.g., If in a particular language gender distinctions appear, it will be the 3rd
person.)
> with respect to methodology: 1) empirical, as in Greenberg’s implicational universals; vs. 2) rationalist, as in
Chomsky’s formal universals

6. Analysis of language universals: central differences between the two paradigms of Chomsky (1965) vs. Greenberg
(1960, 1963, 1978)

> main differences with respect to:

> data base (a single language/a small number of languages vs. a wide range of languages)
> abstractness (differences in the level of analysis: abstract/deep vs. concrete/surface)
> explanation (innateness vs. eclectic – functional, pragmatic or psychological)

7. Data base

a) arguments for the study of one language:

> English is a human language so it must have all the properties of languages
> the more languages we study the more obscure are the universal patterns
> universals can be based on the universal grammar with a set of rules and principles
> an analysis of all languages is not possible (lack of data, practical reasons, language death)

b) arguments for the study of many languages:

> some language universals have to be predicated on other languages – we require data from a wide range of languages
to validate a given language universal (e.g., implicational universals)
> English has features not commonly found in other languages (be able to give examples) and often has no features
common in other languages (be able to give examples) – as a result we may get a slanted description because of
irregularities of this single language

c) how to sample?
Marcin Kilarski Polish-English contrastive grammar 3

> instead of attempting to examine all languages, a language sample can be compiled including from 50/100 up to 500
languages
> avoidance of bias: a sample has to be balanced or representative, i.e. we have to avoid bias, in the form of either
over- or underrepresentation:
> genetic (due to common inherited features)
> typological (due to common typological features)
> areal/geographic (due to features distributed through contact)
> bibliographic (due to availability of data)

8. Abstractness

> while both approaches use abstract analysis (some degree of abstractness is involved in the study of subject or relative
clause), Chomsky’s paradigm is constructed purely in terms of deep syntactic structures
> type of generalizations made: inductive vs. deductive

a) empirical / inductive generalizations: “The only useful generalizations about language are inductive generalizations.
Features which we think ought to be universal may be absent from the very next language that becomes accessible …
The fact that some features are, at any rate, widespread, is worthy of notice and calls for an explanation; when we have
adequate data about many languages, we shall have to return to the problem of general grammar and to explain these
similarities and divergences, but this study, when it comes, will not be speculative but inductive.” (Bloomfield 1933:
20, quoted in Aikhenvald 2000: 4)

b) Chomsky’s analysis
> universals are postulated a priori, deductively, which raises problems as to the validity of the universal; the existence
of an inferred universal typically cannot be demonstrated empirically

“In conclusion, we will then bring evidence in favour of the following thesis: the earlier discussion of universals can be
defined in such a way as to impose irrelevant intervening contexts in selectional rules. Furthermore, the speaker-
hearer’s linguistic intuition is not to be considered in determining problems of phonemic and morphological analysis.
To characterise a linguistic level L, an important property of these three types of EC is unspecified with respect to an
important distinction in language use. Conversely, the notion of level of grammaticalness raises serious doubts about
the extended c-command discussed in connection with the impersonal passive structure. Thus the appearance of abstract
subjects in domains relatively inaccessible to ordinary extraction does not affect the structure of nondistinctness in the
sense of a theory of language universals.” (Chomsky 1987: 169)

9. Explanation

a) monogenesis
> common genetic origin of all languages from proto-world
> can be discarded as it is untestable and doesn’t account for implicational universals

b) innateness
> arguments against: much of what has been considered innate can be developed by children as they begin to use
language for communicative purposes; problems with neurobiological verification of innateness
> arguments for universals as genetic predispositions: structure of the vocal tract, ability to perceive and process data
from the outside world; general grammatical principles involving sequence and structure

c) language internal
> accounted for in terms of syntactic rules only, e.g., in the account of the passive in Whaley (1997: 43-44)

d) psychological
> relates language universals to perception/cognition/processing; applied to, e.g., categories which reflect distinctions
found in the outside world, e.g., colour terms, sex, animacy, shape; the predominance of SO basic word order, related to
the salience of NPs; or the avoidance of ambiguous structures

e) functional
> certain universals serve to make language more effective as a system of communication, applied to, e.g., the use of
deictic systems rather than proper names; or the avoidance of redundancy in the omission of pronominal subject in pro-
drop languages

f) pragmatic
> relates language structure to language use / discourse; applied to, e.g. the presence of deictic systems (spatial,
temporal) and the presence of pronominal categories to refer to the speaker/hearer (and also other address forms)
Marcin Kilarski Polish-English contrastive grammar 4

10. References

> for a general list of language universals, see the Universals Archive (the data for the VSO => Prep universal are taken
from that archive) (http://typo.uni-konstanz.de/archive/intro/index.php)
> for NP in English and possibly other languages see the article “Toward a Universal Typology of Noun Phrases”
(Polarczik 1998) (http://www.specgram.com/CXLVIII.3/04.polarczik.typology.html)

Aikhenvald, A.Y. 2000. Classifiers: A typology of noun categorization devices. Oxford: OUP.
Bell, A. 1978. “Language Samples”. In Universals of human language, ed. J. Greenberg, 123-156.
Bloomfield, L. 1933. Language. New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston.
Chomsky, N. 1965. Aspects of the theory of syntax. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Comrie, B. 1981. Language universals and linguistic typology. Oxford: Blackwell. (Chp 1 "Language universals" 1-15,
22-27).
Crystal, D. 1987. The Cambridge encyclopedia of language. Cambridge: CUP. ("Typology and universals" 84-85).
Greenberg, J.H. 1960. “A qualitative approach to the morphological typology of language”, International Journal of
American Linguistics 26.
Greenberg, J.H. 1963. “Some universals of grammar with particular reference to the order of meaningful elements”, in:
J.H. Greenberg (ed.), 58-90.
Greenberg, J.H. 1966. “Language universals”, in: Th.E. Sebeok (ed.), Current trends in linguistics. Vol. 3: Theoretical
foundations. The Hague: Mouton, 61-112.
Greenberg, J.H. (ed.) 1963. Universals of language. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Greenberg, J.H. – Ch.A. Ferguson – E.A. Moravcsik (eds.). 1978. Universals of human language. Vol. 1: Method and
theory; Vol. 3: Word structure; Vol. 4: Syntax. Stanford: Stanford University Press.
Greenberg, J.H. 1991. "Two approaches to language universals", in: Linda R. Waugh – Stephen Rudy (eds.), New
vistas in grammar: Invariance and variation. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. 417-436.

updated 15 March 2009