Laura Romig, Class of 2025, Language Ambassador
Since you are reading these words, you definitely know one language, and as a reader of this newsletter, you most likely either know or are learning other languages. In fact, you're probably familiar with dozens or even more different languages. So since you know languages, here's a question: What do all languages have in common?
The answers that quickly come to mind are also quick to dissipate: All languages are spoken—no, some are signed. All languages have words—well, it turns out we don't even have a great definition of "word," and not all languages have identifiable "word" units. All languages have nouns, verbs, and adjectives—in fact, some do not. All languages have tense—nope, there are some that use other methods to denote time. Surely all languages have numbers—there are even languages that lack numbers.
When learning a language, there is a factor that we often don't discuss, but might actually be one of the most influential parts of the learning experience: we learn one language from another language. We learn vocabulary from the words available to us in our first language. We translate sentences and grammar structures into our first language. The footholds we cling to in another language come directly from the language we are learning it in. Consider this: imagine you learned Spanish in middle and high school, and then in college you started studying Yoruba—but the materials you were using to study Yoruba were all in Spanish. You might be in trouble, building a new language on top of a possibly shaky structure.
So, except for the language you learn as a child, learning a new language is always built on the foundation of another one. The invisible foundation of the Chinese I've studied at Brown, for one example, is the English I learned from my parents, and possibly the Spanish I studied as a teenager. The new language you are learning, perhaps until it reaches a level of instinctual, near-perfect fluency, is still standing on the steps constructed by the first. One consequence of this fact is that, while learning, we constantly compare languages. In search of footholds, we measure structures and words and conventions in the new language against what we already know. In the process, we often find mismatched information, unable to correlate a familiar linguistic structure, like tense, or pronouns, or gendered adjectives, to its analog or lack of one in another language. If everything—word order, vocabulary, grammar—were the same across languages, then learning a new one would simply be a matter of mass memorization. Finally, this brings me back to the question I posed in the beginning. Is there anything that all languages have in common?
In linguistics, the term for this is a linguistic universal, more specifically an absolute linguistic universal, something constant across all languages. The search for linguistic universals, if they exist, is motivated by the desire to completely define what a language is, a question which still lacks a satisfying answer. Perhaps if we can list the qualities that apply to all languages, then we can establish that languages are simply the set of entities that meet these criteria. There are also certain universals that only apply to a subset of languages (think: All spoken languages have vowels and stops). As patterns we can cling onto, these implicative universals often help us build connections between languages. And of course, languages with a shared history, or that are part of the same language family, naturally have more in common than languages from completely disparate roots.
But, partly because of this, the existence of linguistic universals themselves in in dispute. Research and discussion about them from the 20th and 19th centuries is more likely to be Indo-European language-centric, for example, without conducting analysis to the fullest scope of the thousands of languages that currently exist. There are counterexamples for all but a few of the linguistic universals that have been proposed. Additionally, the search for a definitive "definition" of language may be part of an ongoing thread throughout history that politically defines languages, labelling certain languages as 'dialects' or even systematically removing and disempowering them. And even just the concept of a linguistic universal could be a research roadblock to another evident feature of the linguistic landscape, linguistic diversity. The search for universal linguistic features could be influenced by a desire to discover them, as if linguistic homogeneity is more desirable than linguistic diversity. And, given the geographic and ethnic center of linguistic studies in European and Western countries and languages, linguistic researchers might even subconsciously look for research that linguistic "universals" common in those languages exist throughout the world. With this background, our question becomes not "Do linguistic universals exist?," but "Do we want linguistic universals to exist? Should we?"
Searching for linguistic universals or near-universals also might imply that features shared by many languages are somehow more desirable, or even make that language more ideal, or fit to survive. But as much as languages shape history, they are also unequivocally shaped by the events, coincidences, and tragedies of history. The prominent linguistic features that survive today could be the result of a fluke that happened thousands of years ago. Many speakers of endangered languages today understand deeply that the scars of history can destroy a language's capacity to survive, and therefore its unique features. Furthermore, how do we know that the collection of languages that exist today represent the full scope of possible human languages? In other conditions, or in the future, or through a different course of human history, many languages, or all of language itself, might be radically different. Linguistic universals are perpetually at odds with the undeniable fact that languages always change.
As students of languages, we often find that the greatest challenge and the greatest meaning both arise from the differences between the languages we know and languages we learn. These differences are a catalyst for deeper cultural understanding and empathy, first of all. But at the same time, understanding difference runs parallel to understanding commonality; shared linguistic history and cultural aspects can make learning a new language more rewarding. Maybe the search for linguistic universals is also a reflection of this search for common ground and connection. We want to see ourselves in others. Ultimately, the human languages that currently exist most likely do have some basic universals: they are systematic, have rules, are used to communicate, utilize symbols and duality of patterning, and are able to change. And most importantly, all languages can be learned. As you search for footholds in the new languages you are learning, at Brown and beyond, this is the linguistic universal that will always matter the most.
For more, check out this paper about how many languages have words for "this" and "that" and this article about how efficiency manifests in most all languages.