| 421.1.1: INTRODUCTION |
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| If you know
more than one language, which is very likely, you may
have noticed that though the languages differ in certain
respects they also resemble in a number of ways. Take,
for instance, Telugu, Hindi and English. Hindi and Telugu
are similar in that in a simple sentence the order of
words in these languages is subject (S), object (O) and
Verb (V) i.e. SOV. Also both Hindi and Telugu use postposition
with the Noun Phrases e.g. raam ko 'to Ram',
ghar me ' in the house', Te. hari ke
'to hari', sabbu to 'with soap' etc. English differs from
Hindi and Telugu in these respects. The order of constituents
in a simple sentence in English is SOV, and also unlike
Hindi and Telugu, English uses prepositions. On the other
hand, there are also certain other details in which Hindi
and Telugu differ from each other. In Hindi, for instance,
except a certain class of adjectives viz. saged 'white',
laal 'red', all other adjectives agree in number,
gender and case with the nouns they modify. For example,
acchaa laRkaa 'good boy', acche laRke 'good boys'
and acchii laRkii 'good girl'. But in Telugu there is
no such agreement between the adjective and the noun,
e.g. manci abbaayi 'good boy', manci abbaayilu 'good boys'
and manci ammaayi 'good girl'. But then there are many
other details which are shared by not only the three languages
considered so far, but by all languages in general. All
human languages, for example, use a finite set of sound
units which fall into two major classes, vowels and consonants.
The number of possible sentences in any language is infinite.
All languages provide us with sentence - types using which
we can make statements, ask questions, give orders and
make requests. Yet another property that can be found
in languages in general is that they provide for a mechanism
in their structure by which one clause can be embedded
under another clause like laRkii ro rahii hai ' the girl
is crying', is embedded as a subordinate clause in the
following sentences lagtaa hai laRkii ro rahii hai 'it
seems the girl is crying', tum jaantee ho ki laRkii
ro rahii hai ' you know that the girl is crying'. |
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| The above
illustrations thus show that while languages differ from
each other in certain details they also share a number
of characteristics in common. In the words of Greenberg,
Osgood and Jenkins (1968:xv) "underlying the endless and
fascinating idiosyncrasies of the world" languages, there
are uniformities of universal scope. Amid infinite diversity,
all languages are, as it were, cut from the same pattern.
We call those linguistic elements, principles and rules
which hold good for all languages 'linguistic universals'
or 'language universals'. Linguistic similarities at different
levels of language structure and have postulated them
as universals. But language is such a complex phenomenon
that we are now here close to establishing in absolute
terms what these common properties are. Of course, once
we are in a position to identify the underlying common
properties of human language they can be taken as belonging
to what we may call a 'General' or 'Universal grammar'.
What is common to all languages need not then be repeated
in the grammar of individual languages. The particular
grammar of individual languages need point out only those
linguist traits which are specific to the language in
question. |
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| 421.1.2: HISTORICAL BACKGROUND |
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| Much of
the work on language universals in modern linguistics
have their beginning in the 1960's, giving rise to two
clear cut lines of investigations. One of these approaches
was influenced by Joseph Greenberg and the other by Noam
Chomsky. We will be dealing with these two major approaches
to language universals shortly. But before we do so it
should be made clear that search for language universals
is nothing new and dates back to several centuries. As
Ferguson (1978:9) points out the systems study of human
language has had as its central concern the paradox that
"all languages are in some fundamental sense one and the
same, and yet they are also strikingly different from
one another". This search for one common base has been
approached from different perspectives as will be clear
from the following remarks of Ferguson (1978:9): "Students
of language have looked for the oneness in a sacred language,
in an artificially contrived language, or in a comparison
of many languages; they have looked for it to set a norm
of correctness, to understand the working of the human
mind, or simply to find general properties of language".
Roger Bacon who lived in the 13th century held the view
that "Grammar is one and the same in all languages in
substance, though it may vary in accidents" (Ferguson,
1978:9). Similarly Marsais observed in 1750 that " In
a grammar there are parts which pertain to all languages.
In addition to these general (universal) parts, there
are those which belong only to one particular language;
and these contribute the particular grammar of each language"
(Fromkin and Rodman 1993:17). Chomsky in his book called
'philosophical grammar' is deeply rooted in the work of
Port Royal - grammar (during roughly 1640-60), in the
general linguistics that developed during the Romantic
period and in the rationalist philosophy of mind. As distinct
from this, modern American structural linguistics, which
achieved its peak development during the 30s and 40s of
this century, has a different course of development. It
had its basis the empiricist philosophy which focuses
on observed facts as a source of all knowledge. The major
emphasis of American structural linguistics, until about
the late fifties of this century was to describe the newly
discovered languages of Africa, Asia and America in their
own terms. That is, there was a careful effort to avoid
the imposition of the structures of the better known languages
like Greek, Latin, or English on the languages which were
being explored for the first time. An extremely cautious
approach in this direction led to the opinion that languages
could differ from each other in an unlimited and unpredictable
way. |
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| As indicated
in the beginning of this section since 1960s linguistic
universals attracted the attention of a large number of
scholars. In theoretical linguistics search for language
universals has now become one of the major goals of linguistic
investigation. This search has its impact on such applied
areas of linguistics as language acquisition, language
and speech disorders and speech therapy, speech synthesis
and translation studies. |
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