All Questions
Tagged with universal-grammar linguistic-universals
14 questions
6
votes
1
answer
698
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How does Greenberg’s approach to language universals differ from Chomsky’s?
In the Oxford Handbook of Linguistic Analysis, 2015, Chapter 2, “The Adaptive Approach to Grammar”, by T. Givón, the author says that Joseph Greenberg’s attempt to characterize the universal aspect of ...
- 817
0
votes
4
answers
170
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Human natural language metalanguage
I was thinking about how a controlled grammar of English can be used as a programming language because it’s fully parsible.
The idea of doing this for other languages, such as Sanskrit, brought me to ...
- 817
2
votes
2
answers
429
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Languages w/out dependent clauses
Is there a language w/out dependent clauses, i.e. one in which you couldn't say e.g. "I know that x is here" w/ a clause, where the main clause is in italic and dependent in bold (and that overlaps, ...
- 504
-3
votes
1
answer
147
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What would be the obstacles to creating a language composed of all the words of all the human languages existing today? [closed]
So this is an question I haven't tried to answer/solve too much before posting, mainly because it's more of a game and exercise in creativity and wanted to have many opinions.
So clearly this task of ...
- 97
4
votes
2
answers
458
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What are the structural similarities that exist common to all languages?
What (if any) are the structural similarities that all languages share that allows them to be taken in and learned by virtually all humans starting at a very young age?
- 143
0
votes
0
answers
38
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Minimalist Language: List Of Distinct Universal Properties? [duplicate]
I'm wondering if someone has compiled a list of fundamentally distinct characteristics (verbs, adjectives, nouns)? I'm aware of the Toki Poni language, but that's TOO minimalist, it neglects important,...
- 197
3
votes
0
answers
175
views
It's now 12 years since Everett made his startling claims about Pirahã. How have his claims held up? [closed]
How are they viewed by the scholarly community now?
- 49
5
votes
1
answer
1k
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Do all languages have the same set of grammatical relations?
As for parts of speech, I am quite sure it is not the case.
For instance, some languages are problematic in separating clearly verbs from adjectives like Japanese and Korean, some native American ...
- 1,047
2
votes
2
answers
841
views
How far is Natural semantic metalanguage really natural?
The theory of Natural semantic metalanguage states there are about 70 words we need to describe anything. However, for example DEAD we could express like NOT LIVING and for instance Russian often ...
- 597
3
votes
5
answers
578
views
Is the concept of a verb-subject complete sentence a cultural/linguistic invariant?
In english, a 'complete sentence' seems to refer to having at least a single, complete clause — i.e. a subject (noun) and verb — e.g. "I run". This seems to be engrained in the concept of a complete ...
- 139
7
votes
4
answers
5k
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Does any linguist honestly believe that nouns and verbs are not universals?
Does any serious scholar really believe that some languages have no distinction between verbs and nouns?
Wikipedia pages suggest this. I studied physics, so linguistics is not my field at all.
...
- 81
4
votes
2
answers
21k
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What do all languages have in common? [closed]
What do all languages have in common ? I'm looking for a list of features (such as grammatical, semantic or phonetic elements) that are present in all natural languages.
- 51
4
votes
0
answers
378
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Is there any evidence pro/contra Du Bois' Preferred Argument Structure (ergative patterning in discourse)?
In The Discourse Basis of Ergativity published in Language in 1987, John W. Du Bois proposed a theory which stated that (p. 850)
[universally] the distribution of new information vs. old ...
- 346
9
votes
2
answers
1k
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What is the origin of the "hierarchy of projections", the language system or (some) conceptual system?
All languages display some form of the hierarchy of projections, to the extent we understand what this is: in a given clause, roughly, complementizers are higher than inflectional heads are higher ...
- 1,976