Whether or not there’s a sort of underlying universal set of rules that governs languages the world over has long been a matter of debate among the linguistics community.
Recently, a team of researchers, led Annemarie Verkerk from Saarland University and Russell D. Gray from the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, analysed hypotheses about so-called ‘linguistic universals.’ By studying 1700 languages, they figured out that, while languages may sound very different, there are strong recurring patterns among even completely unrelated languages, including preferences for word order, and how grammatical relationships are marked within sentences.
This ongoing research is fascinating not just to linguists and anthropologists but also to researchers working with topics including cognitive development and communication, as they help us to understand which aspects of language are, or could be, truly universal – and therefore part of who we are as a species – and which are influenced by culture and contact.
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