Universals in language.

There is strong evidence that language as a tool for thinking has many universal and invariant elements. Although culture may determine to some degree our thoughts, languages do not of their own accord yield different thinking processes. The research with deaf children shows that cognitive development is to some degree independent of language (see also Eibl-Eibesfeldt, 1979). Deaf children display a language-like structure in their gestures, often using multiple gestures, compared to normal hearing children who will typically only use one gesture (Goldin-Meadow & Mylander, 1998). The structural similarities in gestures for deaf children were demonstrated in both the U.S. and China suggesting an innate basis for language gesture expression. Chomsky (1980) argued that humans possess a hardwired universal grammar to which all languages conform that is independent of cultural influence. When a child is born this innate organization is present in the form of a language organ analogous to other organs present for vision or hearing and is genetically based and common to all members of the species (Chomsky, 2000).

An apparent innate universal organization determines at least some aspects of word order in a language. For example a word order placing the object first followed by the subject and then the verb does not occur in any language (Greenberg, 1978). Intonation also has universal properties (Bolinger, 1978) with emphasis indicated by a high pitch. To support this point try to listen North Korean news casters on YouTube talk about their great or dear leaders and the intonation convey the importance and reverence attributed to these more or less superhuman objects of worship. Evidence for universality in language is also supported by similar semantic meaning in all languages (Osgood, 1980). Factor analyses of adjectives were administered in surveys to respondents in varying language groups and the results showed that in all participant groups the results yielded three factors called evaluative, potency, and activity dimensions. Polarity of the positive and negative is also thought to be a basic universal characteristic of human cognition. In calculating a similarity index for 12 languages the results yielded a correlation of .67 (Osgood, 1979). Although languages are different and dependent on cultural evolution, there are cross-cultural invariant elements that also suggest our common genetic evolutionary history.

Date: 2015-01-11; view: 678