[jcranmer]

> aren't there a couple of core features/structures all languages have?

The answer is 'no', especially in the sense that there's a relatively finite set of possible grammars that a putative natural language could be compared against. In terms of basic parts of speech, I believe that every language does have something that you can describe as a noun, but that's more or less the only "universal" part of speech (there are some languages that essentially don't have verbs--you "do a look" rather than "see", e.g.).

The more serious problem, I think, is that the corpus of Linear A is simply too tiny to do any serious study, and I don't know how well the written corpus is at actually reflecting problems like segmenting text into words or morphemes. In essence, the available evidence is so paltry that you could justify just about any grammatical hypothesis, I suspect.

If I'm understanding Chomskyian linguistics correctly (that's a really big if), there was originally thought to be an inherent "language organ" that strongly controlled grammar. But over time, and as linguistics documented more languages, the things that are universal in grammars in this subdiscipline has essentially been reduced to 'merge', which is an abstract concept that I'm pretty sure I don't understand.

[ummwhat]

Recursive nesting still stands as universal. Pretty much every language has a form of "he said {she said { stuff }}". One guy claims to have found a language deep in the Amazon without this feature, but no one thinks he's credible.

Pretty much every language does verbs connecting subject/object. In English it's S-V-O. Treating addition as a verb, our sentences work kind of like X+Y. Other languages use something like reverse polish.

The original Chomsky idea was that there was an underlying brain structure reflected in language and only a small number of tunable parameters defined the whole space. This hypothesis was meant to explain how humans learn language so quickly. The idea was, much like horses that start galloping just after leaving the room, maybe we're born already sort of knowing it.

The theory hasn't panned out so far. There's too much similarity between unrelated languages to pretend like some universal mechanism isn't behind them, but for nearly any particular lingustic feature you can usually find at least one obscure example which shows it isn't universal. The two features I've listed are the exception.

[DFHippie]

There are 6 orders of S, V, and O. All are attested, but the orders where O precedes S are vastly less common than those where S precedes O.

The counter-argument to Chomsky's Universal Grammar is that commonalities across language exist because they are all solving similar problems for which there are more or less optimal solutions. In essence, convergent evolution produces similarity. And one might argue that recursive structure isn't a feature but rather the absence of a feature: something to prevent recursion. If you have a rule that says you can make category X out of pieces which may also be of category X, then you have recursion. So using a noun as a modifier of another noun -- "lunch counter" -- produces recursion.

[bradrn]

> I believe that every language does have something that you can describe as a noun, but that's more or less the only "universal" part of speech (there are some languages that essentially don't have verbs--you "do a look" rather than "see", e.g.).

R.M.W. Dixon argues convincingly that every language has at least nouns and verbs; less convincingly (IMO), he also argues for adjectives as a universal category. Some languages have only a very small set of verbs — Kalam has ~200, and Wutung has only 32 [0] — but they still have an identifiable category of verbs nonetheless. (Jingulu has been said to have 3 verbs, but only if you disqualify the large set of non-inflecting verbs.)

[0] https://openresearch-repository.anu.edu.au/handle/1885/10937... — a complete list of all 32 simple verbs may be found on page 293 (322 of the PDF)

[catlifeonmars]

> The more serious problem, I think, is that the corpus of Linear A is simply too tiny to do any serious study

This is probably a silly question: but if there the corpus is so small, why are we convinced that it has any meaning at all?

[ncmncm]

"There was originally thought" meaning "Chomsky thought". But it was all obvious bollocks, contrary to elementary natural selection.

Grammars necessarily have to be compatible with brain organization inherited from our primate ancestors, who obviously could have had no "language organ" carried about waiting to find some sort of use by their future descendants. Brain structures all need to be immediately useful for surviving or reproducing.

One theory has been that language runs on a bit of brain hypertrophied as a sort of peacock's tail, not necessarily of any survival value, originally, but needed to impress a potential mate. It could have been used to carry a tune.

Others have suggested language originated between mothers and children, growing out of lullabies. The two are not incompatible.

[catlifeonmars]

> One theory has been that language runs on a bit of brain hypertrophied as a sort of peacock's tail

> Others have suggested language originated between mothers and children, growing out of lullabies.

Sources?

——-

Separately, is language unique to humans? Are there examples of convergent evolution (semblances of grammatical structure) that can give us more clues as to how language may have evolved in humans?

[ncmncm]

Grammatical language, e.g. with subclauses, does appear from evidence thus far to be unique to humans, although whalesong is complex enough that it might yet be found there.

I gather that, since the "universal grammatical structure" was promoted, languages have been discovered that are said to lack any such forms. "Said to", because very few people are reporting on them.

Sorry, for sources I would be doing the same DDGing you will.