From: Arnaud Fournet
Message: 60176
Date: 2008-09-20
----- Original Message -----
From: "mkelkar2003" <swatimkelkar@...>
To: <cybalist@yahoogroups.com>
Sent: Saturday, September 20, 2008 5:42 PM
Subject: [tied] Language Universals
>
> Also see Language Universals.pdf.pdf in the files section.
>
> "The fundamental observation of Language universals is that pairs of
> linguistic categories in phonology, grammar and the lexicon typically
> show asymmetrical behavior that is to a very large extent cross
> linguistically uniform. Category oppositions like voiced/voiceless,
> glottalized/plain, long/short, singular/plural, positive/negative,
> consanguineal/affinal had been described earlier by the Prague School
> linguists Trubetzkoy and Jakobson as representing a contract between
> unmarked and marked. But it was Greenberg who most forcefully
> claimed and demonstrated that these contrasts exist not just as part
> of a particular language system, but can in principle be observed in
> all languages, not only in phonology, but also through the
> inflectional system and in the lexicon. Where the structuralists
> Trubestzkoy and Jakobson saw markedness constrasts as embedded in the
> structures of individual synchronic languages, Greenberg emphasized
> the universal aspects of the substantive factors of phonetics,
> semantics, and language use, and language change was an integrated
> part of his explanatory framework (Haspelmath, 2005)."
>
> Haspelmath, Martin (2005). Preface to the reprinted edition. In J.
> Greenberg, Language universals (p. vii). Berlin: Walter de Gruyter
> GmbH and Co. KG. ISBN: 3-11-017284-4
>
> M. Kelkar
>
=================
Haspelmath should read the Cours de linguistique Générale
before claiming Greenberg "forcefully" claimed something one century old.
Arnaud
=============