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| 421.1.4 : PHONOLOGICAL UNIVERSALS |
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| A generalization
that can be made about the type of syllables that may
occur in natural languages is that all languages will
have a CV type syllable that is, one in which a consonant
is followed by a vowel, over and above, whatever other
types of syllables they have. |
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| One language
universal pertaining to vowel sounds is as follows. Vowel
sounds are generally distinguished from each other in
terms of a number of factors like tongue, height, frontness
and backness, lip rounding, nasality, duration etc. But
of all these dimensions tongue height seems to be most
basic. Hockett (1955: 83) points out that in a vowel system
"the one dimension that is always present is that of tongue,
height, and attested vowel systems involve two, three
or four contraction heights. Another universal concerning
vowels is the observation that the number of nasal vowels
in language cannot be more than the number of oral vowels". |
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| A number
of universal tendencies are also postulated concerning
other aspects of phonological system. Ferguson, for instance,
has pointed out that the number or positions of contrast
for nasal consonants in a language is never more than
that of the obstruents in which include stops, affricates
and fricatives. For example, in both Hindi and Telugu
there are five positions of contrasts for the oral obstruents
namely bilabial, dental, retroflex, palatal and velar.
But there are only three positions of contrast among the
nasals /m/, /n/ and /N/. Although at a phonetic level
these languages do have palatal and velar nasals besides
the bilabial, dental and retroflex ones, on phonemic the
level we have only three contrasts. |
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| 421.1.5: MORPHOLOGICAL UNIVERSALS |
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| We will
now take up a few instances of morphological universals.
Greenberg points out that among the two processes prefixing
and suffixing, the latter is more common. We generally
come across languages which are exclusively suffixing.
But we do not find languages which are exclusively prefixing.
Among the 30 languages examined be Greenberg, Thai is
the lone example of an exclusively prefixing type of language.
Yet another example of morphological universal can be
taken from the case system. One of Greenberg's universals
(1963:95) goes like this "where there is a case system,
the only case which ever has only Zero allomorph is the
one which includes among its meanings that of the subject
of the intransitive verb. " What this means is that is
that if a language has a system of marking overtly different
case relations in its nouns and pronouns, it is more likely
that the form which serves as the subject of the intransitive
sentence would be left unmarked than the forms occupying
other positions like that of a direct object, indirect
object etc. This may be illustrated with an example from
Tamil. In Tamil pronouns such as avan 'he', aval 'she'
occur without any overt marking when serving as subject
of an intransitive sentence as in the following: |
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| (8) |
avan |
vantaan |
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he |
came |
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'He came'. |
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| (9) |
aval |
vantaal |
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she |
came |
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'She Came'. |
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| But when
used as direct object in transitive sentences, they have
to be marked by case post positions as will be obvious
from the following examples: |
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| (10) |
naan |
avan-ai |
paatteen |
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I |
him(acc) |
saw |
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'I saw him'. |
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| (11) |
hari |
aval-kky |
paNam KuDuttaan |
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Hari |
her to |
money gave |
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'Hari gave her money'. |
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| Some of
the universals proposed in the area of morphology deal
with ways in which such categories of meaning as number,
gender, case, tense, aspect and agreement features are
encoded in natural languages. It has been proposed as
a language universal that whenever a language makes a
formal distinction between singular and plural nouns the
overt marking of this distinction is expressed in the
plural member and not in the singular. For instance, forms
such as boy, girl, man etc. do not carry any overt marker
to indicate that they are singular. But as distinct from
this the plural forms of the nouns boys, girls, men etc.
carry a marker to express the plurality. That is the plurality
of English noun is not expressed by Zero alone though
occasionally the plural nouns can be left unmarked as
in sheep, deer etc. |
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| Points
to Remember |
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