LING 1010 UCONN STUDY GUIDE 2025/2026 QUESTIONS
WITH ANSWERS RATED A+
✔✔Language universals that might not be language-specific universals - ✔✔All non-
artificial human communication systems can be used to expression emotions
Hierarchical structure (is not unique to human language)
Recursion (if there are other systems that use it too)
✔✔Possible alternative explanations for language-specific universals - ✔✔historical
explanations (monogenesis)
biological explanations (architecture of the brain, structure of articulatory organs)
✔✔historical explanations (monogenesis) - ✔✔Monogenesis - all languages stem from
one mother language
Evolution: all evolved things have hierarchical structure
✔✔biological explanations (architecture of the brain, structure of articulatory organs) -
✔✔Neural architecture: all languages are implemented in the same brain design
Other biological constraints: speech/hearing apparatus, more generally: sensory
systems, motoric system
Principles of communication/sign systems: Be clear, be short, be relevant, least effort
etc.
Language is a type of human behavior and the universals can be explained by the
general principles of human behavior (prefer very frequent words to be the shorter
ones)
✔✔Covert universals - ✔✔Hidden universals - mental grammar
Some universals are in the mental grammar and we don't have direct access to them
Theory dependent: advocated by the nativist Chomskyan camp
For example, many languages have covert grammatical gender in nouns, in that there is
no way to tell from the form of a noun which gender it is; gender only becomes apparent
in, for example, articles and adjectival agreement, which depend on gender
✔✔Overt universals - ✔✔Observable universals - actual utterances
, Properties of languages that we can observe directly
Typological studies: survey of a large number of languages
Theory-independent, less abstract
✔✔Narrow down the notion 'linguistic universal' to 'language-specific universal' -
✔✔Something that is true of all communication systems is necessarily true of all
languages. As such it is not a language specific universal and it cannot be used to
support UG????
To show that a universal is language-specific we must try really hard to exclude the
possibility that the universal is due to some other factor or explanation
✔✔Define types of language-specific universals such as: - ✔✔Unconditional (absolute)
universal
Implicational universal
Disjunctive universal
✔✔Unconditional (absolute) universal - ✔✔all languages have A
✔✔Implicational universal - ✔✔if a language has A it also has B (example: superlative
implies comparative affix)
✔✔Disjunctive universal - ✔✔a language has either A or B (aka parameters)
✔✔Parameters capture that the differences between languages are limited -
✔✔Parameters are innate (nature) but their setting depends on language input (nurture)
- Two things children need to learn from environment
-- Lexicon
-- Set the parameters
Parameters universals that give you a choice and allow languages to differ to some
extent
- Disjunctive universals
✔✔Universals can be absolute or statistical i.e. tendencies that hold for a lot of
languages, but not for all - ✔✔Absolute universals: all languages have X in the sense of
'there is no language without X'
Statistical universals: all language have X in the sense of 'there is a strong tendency for
langauges to have X'
- Not compatible with the notion of innateness and UG
WITH ANSWERS RATED A+
✔✔Language universals that might not be language-specific universals - ✔✔All non-
artificial human communication systems can be used to expression emotions
Hierarchical structure (is not unique to human language)
Recursion (if there are other systems that use it too)
✔✔Possible alternative explanations for language-specific universals - ✔✔historical
explanations (monogenesis)
biological explanations (architecture of the brain, structure of articulatory organs)
✔✔historical explanations (monogenesis) - ✔✔Monogenesis - all languages stem from
one mother language
Evolution: all evolved things have hierarchical structure
✔✔biological explanations (architecture of the brain, structure of articulatory organs) -
✔✔Neural architecture: all languages are implemented in the same brain design
Other biological constraints: speech/hearing apparatus, more generally: sensory
systems, motoric system
Principles of communication/sign systems: Be clear, be short, be relevant, least effort
etc.
Language is a type of human behavior and the universals can be explained by the
general principles of human behavior (prefer very frequent words to be the shorter
ones)
✔✔Covert universals - ✔✔Hidden universals - mental grammar
Some universals are in the mental grammar and we don't have direct access to them
Theory dependent: advocated by the nativist Chomskyan camp
For example, many languages have covert grammatical gender in nouns, in that there is
no way to tell from the form of a noun which gender it is; gender only becomes apparent
in, for example, articles and adjectival agreement, which depend on gender
✔✔Overt universals - ✔✔Observable universals - actual utterances
, Properties of languages that we can observe directly
Typological studies: survey of a large number of languages
Theory-independent, less abstract
✔✔Narrow down the notion 'linguistic universal' to 'language-specific universal' -
✔✔Something that is true of all communication systems is necessarily true of all
languages. As such it is not a language specific universal and it cannot be used to
support UG????
To show that a universal is language-specific we must try really hard to exclude the
possibility that the universal is due to some other factor or explanation
✔✔Define types of language-specific universals such as: - ✔✔Unconditional (absolute)
universal
Implicational universal
Disjunctive universal
✔✔Unconditional (absolute) universal - ✔✔all languages have A
✔✔Implicational universal - ✔✔if a language has A it also has B (example: superlative
implies comparative affix)
✔✔Disjunctive universal - ✔✔a language has either A or B (aka parameters)
✔✔Parameters capture that the differences between languages are limited -
✔✔Parameters are innate (nature) but their setting depends on language input (nurture)
- Two things children need to learn from environment
-- Lexicon
-- Set the parameters
Parameters universals that give you a choice and allow languages to differ to some
extent
- Disjunctive universals
✔✔Universals can be absolute or statistical i.e. tendencies that hold for a lot of
languages, but not for all - ✔✔Absolute universals: all languages have X in the sense of
'there is no language without X'
Statistical universals: all language have X in the sense of 'there is a strong tendency for
langauges to have X'
- Not compatible with the notion of innateness and UG
