Task 4. Underline either of the option to complete the statement. Explain your reasoning.

UNIVERSALS STUDIED

Task 1. Brainstorm the propensities that you think can be characteristic to all languages.

Task 2. Verify the statements about languages provided below as true or false (T/F).

All natural languages are initially speech sound systems.

All natural languages can be used to refer to (i.e., describe) themselves.

All natural languages have numbers, prepositions and clauses.

Speakers of all the natural languages have the ability to receive and also send the same message.

If a natural language has a writing system, it has its own literature and education.

In all natural languages, there is no direct connection between the signal and its meaning

All natural languages can create new messages by combining already-existing signs.

All natural languages have their own individual grammar system, however simple.

All languages have pronominal categories involving at least three persons and two numbers.

All natural languages are based on the ability to talk about things that are not physically present.

All natural languages provide the opportunity to make false statements (to lie).

In conditional statements, the conditional clause precedes the conclusion as the normal order in all natural languages.

Whenever the verb agrees with a nominal subject or nominal object in gender, it also agrees in number.

Languages with dominant order VSO have the adjective after the noun.

If a language has inflection, it always has derivation.

No language has a trial number unless it has a dual. No language has a dual unless it has a plural.

Task 3. Match the halves of the statement of universals.

1. In languages with prepositions, the genitive almost always follows the governing noun…

2. When the descriptive adjective precedes the noun…

3. If a language has dominant SOV order and the genitive follows the governing noun...

4. If there are any gender distinctions in the plural of the pronoun…

5. If a language has the category of gender…

a. …there are also some gender distinctions in the singular.

b. … then the adjective likewise follows the noun.

c., it always has the category of number.

d. … while in languages with postpositions it almost always precedes.

e. … the demonstrative and the numeral, with more than chance frequency, do likewise.

Task 4. Underline either of the option to complete the statement. Explain your reasoning.

1. Languages with dominant VSO order are always postpositional/prepositional.

2. With well more than chance frequency, when question particles or affixes are specified in position by reference to the sentence as a whole, if initial, such elements are found in postpositional/prepositional languages, and, if final, in postpositional/prepositional.

3. If the nominal object always precedes the verb, then verb forms subordinate to the main verb follow/ precede it.

4. In expressions of volition and purpose, a subordinate verbal form always follows the main verb as the normal order except in those languages in which the nominal object always precedes the verb/the attributive adjective always precedes the noun.

5. If a language is exclusively suffixing, it is postpositional/prepositional; if it is exclusively prefixing, it is postpositional/prepositional.

6. If in a language the verb follows both the nominal subject and nominal object as the dominant order, the language almost always has a case/tense system.

7. When the adjective follows/precedes the noun, the adjective expresses all the inflectional categories of the noun. In such cases the noun may lack overt expression of one or all of these categories.

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