AHMADU BELLO UNVERSITY

FACULTY OF ARTS
DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH AND LITERARY STUDIES

COURSE CODE: LANG 805

COURSE TITLE: THEORY OF LANGUAGE

GROUP 10
THOMPSON MBAKU-SHAALA P19AREN8007
ISHAKU DIJE P19AREN8042
MANGA CHARITY ANNA P19AREN8049
IBRAHIM YUSUF ANINU P19AREN8038
SANI BELLO ZARIA P19AREN8028
RABIATU ALIYU P19AREN8044
MUSA KANDE P18AREN8030
ABDULRAZAK ADAMU YUNUSA P18AREN8014

QUESTION
THE CONCEPT OF LANGUAGE UNIVERSALITY

LECTURER: Dr. AHMAD ABDULLAHI

MAY 2021
INTRODUCTION

Though every language is different and unique, all languages share certain similarities in

different ways and at different levels. Language is universally the only medium of

communication that is unique to man, therefore, there is a meeting point for all languages.

There are many explanations for Language Universals; the monogenesis which states that all

languages stem from the same proto language and therefore should share some traits, the

Language Contact which states that languages influence themselves and therefore can learn

from each other, the Innateness theory, which states that our genetic ability to use and learn

language also determines some details in language structure, etc. Fredrick (1989)

This paper attempts to discuss the theory of Language Universals, especially from the

Chomskyan and the Greenbergian approach, the kinds of Language Universals, and how

Language Universals is helpful to the study of present-day Linguistics.

What is Language?

Language is a means of communication that is unique to mankind, therefore, Language as

defined by Sweet (2018), is the expression of ideas by means of speech sounds combined into

words, words into sentences, these combinations answering to that of ideas into thoughts.

This implies that language is a build up of smaller linguistic fragments to form larger ones so

that communication can occur. Finegana and Besinier, as cited by Fasold and Linton (2013)

define language as a finite system of elements and principles that make it possible for

speakers to construct sentences to do a particular communicative job.

From the above definitions, it is clear that language has rules, it is organized, has a structured

grammar and sometimes a writing system, hence, the concept of universality is inevitable as

it concerns language.

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LANGUAGE UNIVERSALITY

“Nearly five thousand languages are spoken in the world today. They seem to be quite

different, but still, many of them show similar principles…there even exist basic patterns or

principles that are shared by all languages. These patterns are called universals” Sam (2016).

Ayodele (2001) defines Language Universal as a feature or property that is shared by all

languages. Language universals generally means those features that are valid in almost all

languages, principles that apply to all languages. Fromkin (1989) came up with a few

universal features of language;

 Wherever humans exist, language also exists.

 There is no primitive language, all languages are equally complex and equally capable

of expressing any idea in the universe. The vocabulary of any language can be

expanded to include new words.

 All languages change through time.

 The relationship between the sounds and the meaning of spoken languages and the

sign and meaning of sign languages are the for the most part arbitrary.

 All human languages utilize a finite set of discrete sounds whish are combined to

form meaningful elements or words, which themselves form an infinite set of possible

sentences

 All languages have similar grammatical categories (nouns, verbs and pronouns are

found in all languages).

 There are semantic Universals such as male or female, animate or inanimate, and

colour terms found in all languages

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  Any normal child born anywhere in the world, of any racial, geographical, social,

economic heritage is capable of learning language to which he/she is exposed. The

difference we find in (any) language cannot be due to a biological reason.

 All languages have first and second person singular.

 Speeches assume primacy in all languages.

 All languages have at least two colour terms: black/white, dark/light.

 All languages have kinship terms (father, mother, etc).

While these features are very much limited, Denham and Lobeck (2013), listed the following

features as universal features of language

 Languages exist independent of a writing system.

 All languages have grammar (morphology, syntax, phonology, phonetics and

semantics).

 All languages have the same expression power.

 All children acquire language if exposed to it without instruction.

 All languages change overtime.

 All languages have a common set of basic grammatical properties (Universal

Grammar)

 All languages combine subjects and predicates to form a larger units, clauses. Word

order within the clauses however can differ across languages.

Other Universal features of Language include:

 All languages are equipped with the grammatical structures needed to give orders,

negate a thought, and ask a question.

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  All languages use verbs which can be interpreted as occurring in the past, present, or

future.

 All languages possess a finite set of phonemes (sounds) including vowels and

consonants, that are strung together to form syllables, and words.

 All languages share the basic categories of words, such as nouns, verbs, description

words, relative clauses, and a method for counting.

 All languages use pronouns.

CHOMSKY’S UNIVERSAL GRAMMAR

“Universal Grammar is the study of the condition that must be satisfied by the grammars of

all languages, it is the set of linguistic rules that are common to all languages”. Denham and

Lobeck (2013). Universal Grammar (UG) studies the common grammatical properties shared

by all natural languages and of the parameters of variation between the languages. With cross

linguistic investigation of properties of languages, evidence from language acquisition and

general cognitive abilities, alongside the rapid and uniform acquisition of language in all

children without instruction, the UG postulates that a certain set of structural rules are innate

to humans, independent of sensory experience. It postulates that if a linguistic property of an

individual speaker is a property in all known languages, and if the property is not acquired as

imitation of input data, it is evidence that the property comes from a specific feature of UG.

Universal grammar consists of two components; the core and Periphery. The core, referring

to the elements that all languages share in common, especially the natural ability in man to

learn language and acquire language with the help of the Language Acquisition Device

(LAD). And the Periphery referring to the elements that a language has, and is not shared or

is hardly shared by other languages.

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GREEENBERGS APPROACH

While the Chomskyan approach to language Universals is a lot more innate and absolute,

Greenberg is of the opinion that all meaningful universals are statistical. Greenberg after a

study on the grammar of various languages, posits that there are rules that govern the way

languages work. He classified these rules into phonological Universals, morphological

universals, lexical universals, semantic universals, etc. Greenberg further explains that:

Most lexical universals are statistical rather than absolute. The concept of 'water', for
instance, is probably found in most languages, but not in all. The closest equivalent in
Japanese is mizu, which, however, is only used about cold water; another word o-yu
is used for hot water. The Yimas language of New Guinea has no word for 'water' at
all and instead uses the word-arm 'liquid', which may also refer to other liquids like
petrol and kerosene. Thus, 'water' is at best a statistical universal.
Universal grammar as defined by Greenberg, refers to the general principles that govern all

the spoken languages of the world. As pointed out by Aristar (1991), “non-absolute

generalizations are poor candidates for synchronic explanations based either on universal

grammar or categorical cognitive principles such as processing constraints”.

KINDS OF UNIVERSALS

Absolute universals
There are certain rules in languages that have no exceptions, they are referred to as absolute

universals. If there are minor exceptions to the rule, we speak of universal tendencies or

relative universals. Absolute universals apply to every known language, but there are not

many of them; examples are:

All languages have vowel and consonant sounds.

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All languages make a distinction between noun and verb.

All languages have ways of forming sentences.

All languages incorporate the following semantic distinctions (dry/wet, young/old,

male/female, light/dark, etc).

All languages have pronouns.

Absolute Universals can either be implicational or non-implicational. Universals which can

be stated without a condition are called non implicational. In other words, whenever a rule “If

… then… is valid”, the universal appears in the structure of the respective language Zaeffere

(1991).

Implicational Universals
Implicational universals, as the name implies indicates the presence of an element as

implicated by the presence of another. The presence of one feature naturally implies that the

other feature is present. An implicational universal applies to languages with a particular

feature that is always accompanied by another feature, for example;

If a language has fricative phonemes, then it will have stop phonemes.

If a language has affricatives, then it will have fricatives and stops.

If a language has the voiced stop /b/ /d/, then it must also have the voiceless /p/, /t/.

For colors, there is a pattern of an implicational linguistic universal in relation to the various

meanings of basic color terms with respect to the total number of words describing color.

If a languages possesses only two terms for describing color, their respective
meanings will be 'black' and 'white' (or perhaps 'dark' and 'light'). If a language
possesses three color terms, the third will mean 'red', and if a language possesses

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 four color terms, the next will mean 'yellow' or 'green'. If there are five color terms,
then both 'yellow' and 'green' are added, if six, then 'blue' is added, and so on, Saeed
(2007).

Non-implicational Universals

Non implicational Universals are features in a language that have no conditions attached to

them, neither are they implied by the presence of another feature. They state the presence or

absence of a feature in a language. For example:

All languages have speech sounds.

All languages have grammatical rules guiding the construction of their sentences.

Most languages have stops /p/, /t/ and /k/.

All languages have pronouns.

All languages have word order particular to the language.

PHONOLOGICAL UNIVERSALS:
Phonological Universals are the phonological features or traits that are common to all

languages. One phonological trait common to the sound system of all languages is the

presence of the segmental and the supra-segmental features. All languages have speech

sounds; consonants and vowels, the only difference is in how many the language has. The

number of speech sounds or segmental phonemes varies from language to language. “The

language Rotokas, spoken by 4000 inhabitants of Papua New Guinea, has only 11 phonemes,

while the language !Kung, with 5000 speakers in Namibia and Angola, has 141 phonemes”

Zaeffere (1991). English for example has 44 phonemes (24 consonants and 20 vowels),

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French has 36 phonemes (20 consonants and 16 vowels, Hausa has 39 phonemes (25

consonants and 14 vowels), Idoma has 27 phonemes (20 consonants and 7 vowels).

Some segmental phonemes are universal, while others are found in some languages and not

in others. The following are examples of absolute phonetic universals:

All languages distinguish between vowels and consonants.

The vast majority of languages have fewer vowel phonemes than consonant phonemes.

While some languages are stress based languages, like English language, some languages,

especially Nigerian indigenous languages are tonal. For example; oko, in Yoruba, can mean

vehicle, farm, stone, husband, male sexual organ, and hoe, depending on the tone used.

SYNTACTIC UNIVERSALS

All languages have grammatical rules that guide the construction of their sentences, therefore,

word order in a sentence is worth noting. Though every language has the way in which words

are arranged, most languages have the Subject before the Object (SVO).

After an extensive study, one can define two different sets of basic orders that
languages follow: First SVO, VSO, SOV and second VOS, OVS, OSV. What is the
difference? In the first set, the subject precedes the object; in the second set, it follows
the object. Since the first set is the one which applies to the basic structures of far
more languages than the second one does, the universal rule is that there is an
overwhelming tendency for the subject of a sentence to precede the direct object
among the languages of the world. Sam (2016).

This implies that a wide range of languages make use of the SVO, VSO, or SOV pattern of
word arrangement in a sentence, thus, the subject precedes the verb. Examples are shown
below

Language Subject Verb Object

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English Sarah harvested water

Hausa Mubarak ya sayi takalmi (Mubarak bought a shoe)

Yoruba oremi pa Musa (my friend killed Musa)

Igbo Chioma butere ego (Chioma brought food)

Ninzo Aseh rhe angru (Aseh bought a cloth)

Tiv Anita za ishough (Anita went to the market)

Kantana Lamiso ken la (Lamiso went home)

LEXICAL/SEMANTIC UNIVERSALS

There are certain semantic features or aspects of meaning that all languages share in

common, these features are called semantic universals. One semantic universal is that of

color. “There are eleven basic colour terms: black, white, red, green, blue, yellow, brown,

purple, pink, orange, and grey, but not all languages have all basic color terms. Some have

two (black and white or light and dark), some three, and some four. Others have five; six, or

seven, and some have eight to eleven” Sam (2016).

Other semantic and lexical universals include body terms (hand, leg, head, eyes, mouth, etc),

animal terms (cow, cat, rat, sheep, etc.), and kinship terms (mother, father, etc.). these are the

words that form the basic vocabulary of any language, hence there is no language that does

have these terms.

Another lexical/semantic universal is the case of pronouns. There is no language that has no

pronouns. This is evident in conversations where the “I” is the addresser and “you” is the

addressee. For English language, the first person plural is “we” which stands for more than

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one, the second person is “you” and the third person plural is “they” which refers to more

than one, even though there are languages that accommodate a pronoun for specifically two

people.

Furthermore, all languages have the word class nouns and verbs and differentiate them.

THE RELEVANCE OF THE STUDY OF LANGUAGE UNIVERSALS

 The study of language Universals is scientifically important because of what they

indicate about “the psychic unity of mankind”. Buht and Ethel (1984). This implies

language is still a unifying factor amongst mankind

 The understanding of Language Universals (that certain language ideas are

transferable to another) helps a language learner, through the various rules that apply

to all or most languages, to understand the language use faster.

 Language depicts culture, mankind, and race, therefore, the study of language

universals reveals that regardless of the difference in humans, there are features that

make all humans one.

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CONCLUSION

This paper has been able to define language Universals, look into what the theory postulates

pointing out the difference between the Chomskyan and the Greenbergian approaches to

language universals. The paper has brought out some of the elements and rules that are

common to all languages world-wide, looked at the classifications of language universals and

the relevance of the study of language universals. In conclusion, all languages are different,

but share common rules that guide language as a system.

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REFERENCES

Buht, W and Ethel, G.A (1984). The Importance of Language Universals, London:

Routledge.

Denham, K. and Lobeck, A. (2013). Linguistics for Everyone: An Introduction,

Cambridge: Cengage Learning.

Fasold, R. and Linton, C. (2013). An introduction to Language and Linguistics,

Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Fredrick, J.N (1989). Explaining Language Universals. Oxford: Basil Blackwell Publishing

Fromkin V. and Rodman R. (1978). An Introduction to Language,

Forthwith Tx: Harcourt Barke.

Lamidi, M.T (2000). Aspects of Chomkyan Grammar, Ibadan: Emma Publishing.

Saeed, J.I (2007). Semantics (2ed), Oxford: Blackwell Publishing.

Sam A. (2016). 5 Real Language Universals in Today’s Linguistics.

https://notesread.come/languageuniversals.

Sweet, H. (2018). The History of Language. Malden: Blackwell.

Zaeffere D. (1991). Semantic Universals and Universal Semantics, Ney York: Foris

Publishers.

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