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 the
world' 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 are
generally estimated to be about 4000 to 6000 languages in the world. This number
alone 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 human
language with a view to establishing limits on this variation and seeking
explanations for the limits.
In this study we are going to see how the idea of language universals is put forward
by different approaches proposed by N. Chomsky and J.H. Greenberg and what
different claims have been made about these universals and at what points these
diverge. 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 also
mention 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, we
should 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 hearing
just 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 not
without interest, it reminds us that all human languages exploit the same
vocabulary of elements: consonants, and vowels, nouns, verbs, and clauses and so
on. There is some variation from language to language: all languages have
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 and
complementizers. 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 the
language 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 statements
making up the theory of grammar or universal grammar, Chomskyan linguistic
universals thus express claims about biologically necessary properties of human
language
2.3- Classification of Language Universals
In this section we are going to deal with different binary classifications of language
universals 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. The
modules 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 any
formal 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 the
language in order to be existent as a universal. For example, the fact that all
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 statement
which 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 be
said 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 recognized
in 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 terms
in 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 languages
that 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 between
absolute universals and tendencies. An absolute universal is the one that has no
counter arguments in any of the world's languages. Such as if a language has the
VSO 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 nasal
consonants.) 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 of
possibility telling terms and has terms like "all languages in the world etc. " it is
then 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 to
different parts of linguistics namely, semantic universals, phonologic and syntactic
universals. Semantic universals are the ones that govern the composition of the
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 the
semantic universals deal with less marked, basic terms in language. For example it
deals with the existence of blue rather than the turquoise etc.
On the other hand as understood, phonological universals deal with the phonology
of 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 aims
in 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 have
mentioned what kinds of language universals occur and in what ways they are
different from each other, and why these distinctions are necessary. As a last
section 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 matter
which 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.