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posted by cmn32480 on Friday August 07 2015, @10:28AM   Printer-friendly
from the say-that-again dept.

The amateur linguist in me who, for example, finds it fascinating that Hindi and Farsi are far more closely related to European languages such as English or Greek than they are to other languages in that part of the world such as Arabic or Tamil, has come across an Ars Technica article that appears to demonstrate that there is a "language universal" that binds all language families:

Language takes an astonishing variety of forms across the world—to such a huge extent that a long-standing debate rages around the question of whether all languages have even a single property in common. Well, there's a new candidate for the elusive title of "language universal" according to a paper in this week's issue of PNAS[*]. All languages, the authors say, self-organise in such a way that related concepts stay as close together as possible within a sentence, making it easier to piece together the overall meaning.

Language universals are a big deal because they shed light on heavy questions about human cognition. The most famous proponent of the idea of language universals is Noam Chomsky, who suggested a "universal grammar" that underlies all languages. Finding a property that occurs in every single language would suggest that some element of language is genetically predetermined and perhaps that there is specific brain architecture dedicated to language.

The idea that all the major language families is nothing new, and linguists have documented similar words that seem to be present in different language families all over the globe (e.g., milk). This article may be more evidence of these links, or it may just demonstrate something in the language center of the brain that guarantees that all languages are going to have similar characteristics.


[*] Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America

Original Submission

 
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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 07 2015, @10:45AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 07 2015, @10:45AM (#219499)

    With a universal translator there would be no chance of misunderstanding so we can insult each other with perfect clarity. The resulting world war is sure to wipe out all human life which is exactly what humans deserve. All your mothers are lesbian necrophiles.

  • (Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 07 2015, @10:54AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 07 2015, @10:54AM (#219503)

    > no chance of misunderstanding... lesbian necrophiles.

    I don't understand! Can you point me to a website with pictures?

  • (Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 07 2015, @01:22PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 07 2015, @01:22PM (#219552)

    This was said in jest, but there is some truth to it. I want to say in class (I want to say in a Negotiations class) we talked a bit about how the ambiguity of language and how it plays out in making civilization work. As an example, consider the ambiguity of how slaves would be classified and treated in the US constitution as originally formed. If it had be clearly anti-slavery the slave states would never have signed, and if it had been clearly pro-slavery the free states would never have signed.

    Differences of languages and cultures allow both sides to walk away from an agreement feeling like they "won." If there were fewer misunderstandings of the world it could solve lots of problems, but it could also cause all sorts of extra problems too when two sides really are fundamentally in disagreement with something and now know that for sure.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 07 2015, @03:42PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 07 2015, @03:42PM (#219605)

      That's not an example of language ambiguity, but of a simple compromise.

    • (Score: 3, Insightful) by Joe Desertrat on Friday August 07 2015, @06:47PM

      by Joe Desertrat (2454) on Friday August 07 2015, @06:47PM (#219656)

      As an example, consider the ambiguity of how slaves would be classified and treated in the US constitution as originally formed. If it had be clearly anti-slavery the slave states would never have signed, and if it had been clearly pro-slavery the free states would never have signed.
      Differences of languages and cultures allow both sides to walk away from an agreement feeling like they "won."

      What this really does is push the problem down the road for someone else to solve, and usually, as history shows, the resolution ends up being far more rancorous as a result.

  • (Score: 3, Insightful) by kurenai.tsubasa on Friday August 07 2015, @02:39PM

    by kurenai.tsubasa (5227) on Friday August 07 2015, @02:39PM (#219583) Journal

    Shaka, when the walls fell.