Talk of linguistic universals has given cognitive scientists the impression that languages are all built to a common pattern. In fact, there are vanishingly few universals of language in the direct sense that all languages exhibit them. Instead, diversity can be found at almost every level of linguistic organization. This fundamentally changes the object of enquiry from a cognitive science perspective. This target article summarizes decades of cross-linguistic work by typologists and descriptive linguists, showing just how few and unprofound the universal characteristics of language are, once we honestly confront the diversity offered to us by the world's 6,000 to 8,000 languages. After surveying the various uses of "universal," we illustrate the ways languages vary radically in sound, meaning, and syntactic organization, and then we examine in more detail the core grammatical machinery of recursion, constituency, and grammatical relations. Although there are significant recurrent patterns in organization, these are better explained as stable engineering solutions satisfying multiple design constraints, reflecting both cultural-historical factors and the constraints of human cognition. Linguistic diversity then becomes the crucial datum for cognitive science: we are the only species with a communication system that is fundamentally variable at all levels. Recognizing the true extent of structural diversity in human language opens up exciting new research directions for cognitive scientists, offering thousands of different natural experiments given by different languages, with new opportunities for dialogue with biological paradigms concerned with change and diversity, and confronting us with the extraordinary plasticity of the highest human skills.

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The myth of language universals: Language diversity and its importance for cognitive science

『Google Scholar』の利点

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영어의 능격성(Ergativity)

Life with Two Languages: An Introduction to Bilingualism.@@@Language Spread: Studies in Diffusion and Social Change.

concepts ("freedom") differ from concrete ones ("cat"), as they do not have a bounded, identifiable, and clearly perceivable referent. The way in which abstract concepts are represented has recently become a topic of intense debate, especially because of the spread of the embodied approach to cognition. Within this framework concepts derive their meaning from the same perception, motor, and emotional systems that are involved in online interaction with the world. Most of the evidence in favor of this view, however, has been gathered with regard to concrete concepts. Given the relevance of abstract concepts for higher-order cognition, we argue that being able to explain how they are represented is a crucial challenge that any theory of cognition needs to address. The aim of this article is to offer a critical review of the latest theories on abstract concepts, focusing on embodied ones. Starting with theories that question the distinction between abstract and concrete concepts, we review theories claiming that abstract concepts are grounded in metaphors, in situations and introspection, and in emotion. We then introduce multiple representation theories, according to which abstract concepts evoke both sensorimotor and linguistic information. We argue that the most promising approach is given by multiple representation views that combine an embodied perspective with the recognition of the importance of linguistic and social experience. We conclude by discussing whether or not a single theoretical framework might be able to explain all different varieties of abstract concepts. (PsycINFO Database Record

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The challenge of abstract concepts.

Sign language linguists show here that all the questions relevant to the linguistic investigation of spoken languages can be asked about sign languages. Conversely, questions that sign language linguists consider - even if spoken language researchers have not asked them yet - should also be asked of spoken languages. The HSK handbook Sign Language aims to provide a concise and comprehensive overview of the state of the art in sign language linguistics. It includes 44 chapters, written by leading researchers in the field, that address issues in language typology, sign language grammar, psycho- and neurolinguistics, sociolinguistics, and language documentation and transcription. Crucially, all topics are presented in a way that makes them accessible to linguists who are not familiar with sign language linguistics.

Sign Language: An International Handbook

One type of internal diachronic change that has been extensively studied for spoken languages is grammaticalization whereby lexical elements develop into free or bound grammatical elements. Based on a wealth of spoken languages, a large amount of prototypical grammaticalization pathways has been identified. Moreover, it has been shown that desemanticization, decategorialization, and phonetic erosion are typical characteristics of grammaticalization processes. Not surprisingly, grammaticalization is also responsible for diachronic change in sign languages. Drawing data from a fair number of sign languages, we show that grammaticalization in visual-gestural languages – as far as the development from lexical to grammatical element is concerned – follows the same developmental pathways as in spoken languages. That is, the proposed pathways are modalityindependent. Besides these intriguing parallels, however, sign languages have the possibility of developing grammatical markers from manual and non-manual co-speech gestures. We will discuss various instances of grammaticalized gestures and we will also briefly address the issue of the modality-specificity of this phenomenon.

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Modality-independent and modality-specific aspects of grammaticalization in sign languages

Grammaticalization in sign languages

Pluralization in sign and in speech: A cross-modal typological study

This volume brings together work by scholars engaging in comparative sign linguistics research. The articles discuss data from many different signed and spoken languages. They focus on empirical and descriptive aspects of sign language variation and cover a wide range of topics from different areas of grammar. In addition to this, they address psycholinguistic issues, aspects of language change, and issues concerning data collection in sign languages.

Markus Steinbach

Papers

Sign Language: An International Handbook

Modality-independent and modality-specific aspects of grammaticalization in sign languages

Grammaticalization in sign languages

Pluralization in sign and in speech: A cross-modal typological study

Visible Variation: Comparative studies on sign language structure