UNIVERSALS OF LANGUAGE REVISITED
UNIVERSALS OF LANGUAGE REVISITED

Summary/Abstract: Linguistic universals belong to the category of human universals. Still, some linguists argue that there are no linguistic universals, since exceptions to any rule may always be found. However, as different from science, where a law is automatically ruled out if an exception is proven to exist, linguistics functions according to rules subject to exceptions. Though the nearly five thousand languages spoken in the world today seem to be quite different, many of them show similar principles. Given this high number of languages, and since many languages have not even been the subject of extensive research yet, it would be hard not to find any exceptions. Therefore, not all universals can be found in all languages.

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