Noun and Verb in Universal Grammar

Abstract

A recent article, The importance of language universals,' raises a problem that is fundamental to all linguistic science, and is of particular relevance at the present time in the light of current developments in linguistic method. The authors refer to the importance of studying those features of culture that are found to be universal in human society, one of which is language itself. They then suggest (and this is a topic that requires some elaboration) that linguistics and the study of languages will be benefited by an investigation of 'universals of language', features of human language exhibited everywhere, in all speech communities. They proceed to suggest and enumerate such universals in the fields of phonology, grammar, and semantics. A quest for what the authors call 'language universals' has been part of general linguistic studies throughout their history, and has been felt by many to be the factor of unity in the subject and a justification for regarding linguistics, the study of language, as an academic discipline separate from the study of various individual languages.2 In his inaugural address,3 delivered in Amsterdam in May 1947, Reichling discusses the present state and outlook of linguistic studies, and concludes that while there is of course no 'general language' studied in general linguistics, linguistics is an 'empirical science' which 'aims at tracing and defining the universal categories of speech-phenomena, as well as the factors on which these categories depend. It further studies the non-universal categories of speechphenomena in their relation to the universal ones.' Ernst Otto4 declares: 'die allgemeine Sprachwissenschaft hat die Aufgabe, die durchgehenden Kategorien der menschlichen Sprache heraus zu arbeiten'. On this view, linguistics is an inductive science seeking general rules underlying particular phenomena, and general features common to all individual languages. In the field of grammar, which is discussed more specifically in this paper, Hjelmslev has made an important contribution in his Principes de grammaire g6ndrale,6 and any consideration of general grammatical problems must take his treatment of the subject into account. He states that, without the concept of a general 'panchronic', abstract system of grammar, the study of individual languages will be little more than 'nihilism', depending for its methods solely on pragmatic convenience. By 'panchronic' Hjelmslev means a grammatical framework that shall