^''^'/y-,' UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA LIBRARIES UNIVERSALS of LANGUAGE EDITED BY JOSEPH H. GREENBERG PROFESSOR OF ANTHROPOLOGY STANFORD UNIVERSITY REPORT OF A CONFERENCE HELD AT DOBBS FERRY, NEW YORK APRIL 13-15, 1961 THE M.I.T. PRESS CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS Copyright 1963 by The Massachusetts Institute of Technology All Rights Reserved Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 62-22020 Printed in the United States of America PREFACE The Conference on Language Universals was held at Gould House, Dobbs Ferry, New York, April 13-15, 1961, under the sponsorship of the Linguistics and Psychology Committee of the Social Science Research Council with a grant from the National Science Foundation. Although the topic of universals in language was one of the first to receive interdisciplinary interest from linguists and psychologists in the course of collaboration under the aegis of the S. S. R. C. Committee, the immediate stimulus for the Conference came during the academic year 1958- 1959 from Joseph B. Casagrande, at that time a staff member of the Council. He suggested that the three members of the Committee who were resident Fellows that year at the Ford Center for Ad- vanced Studies at Stanford, California — Joseph H. Greenberg, James J. Jenkins, and Charles E. Osgood — prepare a Memoran- dum on the subject of universals in language which might serve as a basis for theoretical investigation in this area, and for the planning of a Conference. This document, Memorandum Con- cerning Language Universals, was subsequently distributed in slightly revised form to those invited to the Conference and was >* itself one of the subjects of discussion at the meeting. It is printed in the back of this book as an Appendix. The original plan for papers for the Conference was based on a cross- cutting division of the field of universals into those of phonology, grammar, and semantics on the one hand, and syn- chronic and diachronic on the other. While it was realized that such a scheme might cause neglect of topics which did not readily * fit into such a pattern of organization, it was felt that in view of the exploratory nature of the meeting no great harm would re- sult. Moreover, no viable alternative had presented itself. As it turned out various modifications in individual instances largely obscured this ground plan, and this was perhaps just as well. In addition to these invited papers, prepared and circulated in advance, final oral summaries from the viewpoints of linguistics, cultural anthropology, and psychology were presented by Roman Jakobson, Joseph B. Casagrande, and Charles E. Osgood, res- pectively. These summaries, as subsequently edited by the au- thors, appear as the three final sections of this book. The results of the Conference as reported in this book do not contain either verbatim or edited reports of the highly stimulat- ing and productive discussions which took place. However, the recordings of these discussions and subsequent written comments iv Preface and criticisms were circulated and have been incorporated in essential ways. In addition to individual bibliographies, a general bibliography of language universals has been compiled as the final section of this work. This bibliography is obviously not exhaustive. It necessarily overlaps to some extent with bibliographies of the individual chapters but contains many items not cited elsewhere in the present work. I have sought to include specific proposals regarding universals, discussions of the nature of universals, typological analyses from which universals might be derived through empirical investigation, and, in a few cases, analytical discussions which seem suggestive from this point of view. I am aware of the looseness of these criteria. The present brief compilation is intended merely as a general orientation for the non- professional to the problems discussed in the book. I am grateful to Uriel Weinreich for advice and assistance in its pre- paration. I wish to thank all those who participated so enthusiastically and effectively in the work of the Conference. A complete list of participants is included on page vii of this book. In particular, I wish to thank Dr. Francis H. Palmer of the S. S. R. C. staff, to whom fell the task of final preparation of the meeting and the further responsibilities arising from it including aid and advice in the editing of this volume. Joseph H. Greenberg CONTENTS List of Participants vii Introduction * ix 1. The Problem of Universals in Language Charles F. Hockett 1 Z. Are There Universals of Linguistic Change? Henry M. Hoenigswald 23 3. Assumptions about Nasals; A Sample Study in Phonological Universals Charles A. Ferguson 42 4. Phoneme Distribution and Language Universals Sol Saporta 48 5. Some Universals of Grammar with Particular Reference to the Order of Meaningful Elements Joseph H. Greenberg 58 6. A Search for Universals in Indo-European Diachronic Morphology Warren Cowgill 91 7. On the Semantic Structure of Language Uriel Weinreich 114 8. Semantic Universals Stephen Ullmann 172 9. Implications of Language Universals for Linguistics Roman Jakobson 208 10. Language Universals in Anthropological Perspective Joseph B. Casagrande 220 11. Language Universals and Psycholinguistics Charles E. Osgood 236 Appendix: Memorandum Concerning Language Universals Joseph H. Greenberg, Charles Osgood, and James Jenkins 255 Bibliography 265 Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2011 with funding from LYRASIS IVIembers and Sloan Foundation http://www.archive.org/details/universalsoflangOOunse LIST OF PARTICIPANTS The participants in the Conference, in addition to Dr. Francis H. Palmer as S. S. R. C. staff member, were the following: Dr. John B. Carroll Dr. Dell H. Hymes Graduate School of Education Department of Anthropology Harvard University University of California Dr. Joseph B. Casagrande Dr. Roman Jakobson Department of Anthropology Department of Slavic Languages University of Illinois Harvard University and Department of Linguistics Dr. Harold C. Conklin Massachusetts Institute of Technology Department of Anthropology Yale University Dr. James J. Jenkins Department of Psychology Dr. Franklin S. Cooper University of Minnesota Haskins Laboratories New York 17, New York Dr. Sydney M. Lamb Computer Center Dr. Warren C. Cowgill University of California Hall of Graduate Studies Yale University Dr. Wallace E. Lambert Department of Psychology Dr. Charles A. Ferguson McGill University Center for Applied Linguistics Washington 6, D. C. Dr. Eric H. Lenneberg Speech Research Laboratory Dr. William J. Gedney The Children' s Hospital Medical Department of English Center Language and Literature Boston 15, Massachusetts University of Michigan Dr. John Lotz Dr. Joseph H. Greenberg Department of Uralic and Altaic Department of Anthropology Languages Stanford University Columbia University Dr. Einar Haugen Dr. Leigh Lisker Department of Scandinavian Languages Department of Linguistics University of Wisconsin University of Pennsylvania Dr. Floyd G. Lounsbury * Charles F. Hockett Department of Anthropology Department of Linguistics Yale University Cornell University Dr. George P. Murdock Dr. Henry M. Hoenigswald Department of Anthropology Linguistics Department of University of Pittsburgh University of Pennsylvania Dr. Charles E. Osgood Dr. Fred W. Householder, Jr. Institute of Communications Department of Linguistics Research Indiana University University of Illinois Vll List of Participants Dr. Herbert H. Paper Dr. Stephen Ullmann Department of Near Eastern Department of French Languages University of Leeds University of Michigan Dr. Charles F. Voegelin Dr. Sol Saporta Department of Anthropology Department of Spanish and Indiana University Portuguese Dr. Uriel Weinreich University of Washington Department of Linguistics Dr. Thomas A. Sebeok Columbia University Center for Anthropology, Dr. Rulon S. Wells Folklore and Linguistics Department of Philosophy Indiana University Yale University *Professor Charles F. Hockett of Cornell University could not attend the meeting, but in addition to submitting a paper, he cooperated fully in the activities growing out of the Conference. INTRODUCTION Since a number of the papers in the present volume, including the three final statements and the Memorandum, are largely con- cerned with the basic theoretic and methodological issues in- volved in the investigation of language universals, a brief state- ment here seems sufficient to orient the reader to the papers which follow. These remarks are intended to summarize some of the salient points which emerged from the papers and the dis- cussion. It should be understood that while all, or almost all, of the participants in the Conference might concur in what is said here, this introduction represents the personal reactions of the editor to issues discussed at the meeting. In view of the present level of methodological sophistication of both synchronic and diachronic linguistics and the truly enor- mous mass of empirical data on languages of the world now at our disposal, the time appears ripe for generalizing efforts on a wide scale. Indeed this is imperative for linguistics both to fulfill its own promise as a science and to make the contributions to the formulation of a general science of human behavior which its sister disciplines may legitimately expect. Such attempts should not be identified with earlier approaches based on categories formulated a priori from supposed necessary categories of thought derived from normative logic. One of the recurrent themes of the meeting