related texts

UNFINISH: Language universals which are claimed to be innate

Abstract

In this text I will discuss some language universals which are claimed to be innate, and how plausible this claim is.

1. Universals that are a result of the communication role of the language

in of Language universals from its role in communication I discuss what rules any language that is used for communication has to follow. The following universals can be deduced from the communicative role:

  1. language must have rules.

  2. Language must have have basic units, which have their own meaning. For spoken language, these are the words (phrases with a meaning that cannot be deduced from the basic units that make them can also be regarded as basic units).

  3. Most of the of the messages are combinations of several words, according to some rules (grammar).

  4. The basic structure of most of messages is association of some object with attribute or effect.

  5. The rules of combinations are express by one of: meaning of the words, word order, word modifications, special words, modification of words by adding something.

  6. Semantic information normally used whenever it is available to decide about the appropriate combination.

  7. Word order is used for simple and frequently used features of the grammar.

  8. The grammar has to allow combining any message with more information. (This includes the so-called 'recursion').

  9. The main bulk of words mean either an object, an attribute, an action or an effect.

  10. The language must have tools to make identification of objects efficient.

  11. The language must have a way to signify repeated reference to the same object, and make it cheap.

  12. Languages are far from optimum.

Any language that is used for communication by humans must have these features, independently on any innate rules. Therefore, finding these rule does not support theirs innateness.

Other, more specific rules, are more difficult to predict directly from the communicative role of language, because our understanding of language and human cognitive performance is not good enough, but they seems to be plausible. These include:

  1. The fixed location of a header in a phrase. This is an example of using word order for combining the meaning of words to the complete phrase. Fixed location in different types of phrases is presumably less confusing than different word order for each kind of phrase.
  2. Fixed order of subject, verb, object. Again, a usage of word order.

Ignoring the fact that the communicative role of language imposes some rules on it is a typical error of 'wrong null hypothesis', which is quite common in cognitive psychology. (see Reasoning errors for discussion). ------------------------------------------------------------

Yehouda Harpaz
yh@maldoo.com
3nov96
http://human-brain.org/