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This is a pretty basic question I guess, but anyway.

Do all (human) languages have sentences?

Most linguistic articles I read assume so, but can we take this as an assumption?

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It is a pretty basic question, but still worth asking. Of course, you have to define "sentence" before we can answer. The question to ask yourself is "What do I mean by sentence? – jlawler Feb 25 at 5:51
'sentence' is not a concept used much in linguistics. – Gaston Ümlaut Mar 30 at 6:38
@GastonÜmlaut: Really? Not used much? Isn't the object of study for transformational syntax entirely based on the sentence? – Mitch Mar 30 at 23:22
Not as a particular concept. The term 'sentence' is commonly used as a handy way of referring to chunks of text, but it doesn't necessarily refer to anything in particular (unless defined in some way for the purpose at hand). Other terms used in this way are: 'text' and 'utterance'. It might be that those of us who work with languages which do not have written traditions tend to prefer 'utterance'. Here's a discussion of 'sentence'. – Gaston Ümlaut Mar 31 at 0:33

3 Answers

up vote 2 down vote

All languages have sentences; both the basic building blocks (parts of speech like nouns and verbs) and the systems for constructing sentences out of these building blocks are very similar across languages.'

-Mark Aronoff (2007) Language. Scholarpedia, 2(5):3175.

So in answer to your question: YES!

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up vote 1 down vote

According to Merriam-Webster online, a sentence is ``A set of words that is complete in itself, typically containing a subject and predicate, conveying a statement, question, exclamation,...'' In that sense I think we could say yes.

The orthography of certain languages may not have spaces or punctuation marks but, just as all humans have breaks between sounds, they also have breaks between thoughts. If you mean some requirement to do with predicates or subject or objects, perhaps there is a language that almost always omits one of them (I studied applied linguistics and saw many odd examples along the way). I what sense do you mean 'sentence' (as jlawler said)?

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up vote -1 down vote

If we take a sequence of different parts of speech (or a seqence of different words) as a basic definition for a sentence, then there are two types of languages which, presumably, have no sentences falling under the definition:

a) polisynthetic and/or incorporating languages (like Chukchi, Bella Coola or Tiwi) for their word-sentences, and

b) languages with vocabulary where words cannot be divided into parts of speech, like Zhuang or Chinese.

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Whoever downvoted, be sure to leave a comment to help the answerer learn what makes a better answer. – Joe Mar 28 at 20:14
I think this is a trace from some unskillful person I know from another site. It's just a smut which does not have anything to do with the quality of my answer. A kind of downvoter who has nothing to say due to the lack of any knowledge about the subject. – Manjusri Mar 29 at 6:06
I didn't downvote but I'm tempted. Re a) polysynthetic languages still have sequences of morphemes. The fact that the morphemes don't have space between them doesn't mean there aren't sentences. b) These languages do have part of speech categories eg see this paper. – Gaston Ümlaut Mar 30 at 2:05
a) The morphemes are parts of words, not of sentences (pls see the initial definition above). b) The parts of speech in isolating languages (including Zhuang) are defined by what can be best named 'probabilistic semantics' (pls see the Bodomo's paper on pronominal system in Zhuang, or a paper on 'can' representation in the same language). – Manjusri Mar 30 at 3:42
I think it's important to be aware that 'sentence' is not a concept used much in linguistics as it pertains best to writing. I'm not sure what you mean by saying the POS in isolating languages are defined using 'probabalistic semantics', POS are defined in pretty much the same ways across all languages and Zhuang (according to Bodomo) has a pretty unsurprising set of POS categories. – Gaston Ümlaut Mar 30 at 6:32
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