Traditionally, typology was used as an alternative method for pursuing the same goals as Generative grammar: to determine the limits of possible human languages. The works of Joseph Greenberg has been particularly instructive and influential in this regard. Greenberg (1963) represented universals in logical form, namely as Implicational universals and biconditional universals (a language has X if and only if it also has Y). He constructed an areally and genetically diverse sample of 30 languages in order to infer empirically valid universals arguing that grammatical categories must be compared across languages as on an ultimately external semantic basis. He then applied this method to word order and morphological categories, constructing a total number of 45 universals. According to him, search for universals must focus on the distribution of types found in languages, such as the preference of suffixing over prefixing, and the correlation between different typological features across languages, such as the correlation between preposition-noun order and genitive-noun order. That means significant universals are to be found in the constraints on cross-linguistic variation, not on cross-linguistic uniformity. His 1963 paper established the basic methodology of what is known now as the Typological approach to grammar deriving major empirical results and offers an explanation used widely today in Typological analyses. At the same time, Chomsky was also arguing that linguists should seek for language universals, but via deductive reasoning through the study of individual language. Chomsky and Greenberg at the same time proposed opposing theories about universals of grammar (particularly syntax), how they are to be discovered, defined and how they are to be explained. These later came known as Chomskyan and Greenbergian approach to language universals and later characterized more broadly as the Formalist and the Functionalist approaches to language.
Ontologically, Greenberg’s universals are very different from the principles on which Chomskyan universals focuses.
- Under Greenbergian framework, speakers need not know about the universals, either implicitly or explicitly. Greenberg’s universals are not part of I-language.
- Typologists tend to assume a functionalist framework for language description. Consequently, the universals they state are normally couched in much more concrete terms than the abstract UG principles which generativists seek to discover.
- Just as Greenbergian, universals are ontologically very different from UG principles, so the research methods of typologists are quite different to those of generative linguists. We saw earlier that generative linguists deduce the existence of particular UG principles from the facts of language acquisition via a poverty-of-the-stimulus argument (or, at least, that is what they claim to do). Greenbergian universals, in contrast, are arrived at inductively, by comparing data from large numbers of languages. Inductive generalizations, however, are only as good as the data on which they are based. For this reason, typologists do not study random groups of languages, but use special techniques to construct representative language samples. In particular, the Typologist's sampling techniques are designed to avoid genetic and aerial bias: if a sample contains too many languages from the same family or the same geographical area, then it may not provide a reliable picture of cross-linguistic variation.
Greenberg’s universals are known as Implicational Universals (universals relate the presence of one property to the presence of some other property). Logically, this universal can be symbolized as- if P, then Q, which results in four possibilities:
a) both P and Q
b) P and not-Q
c) Not-P and Q
d) Not-P and not-Q
E.g., if a language has VSO as basic word order, then it has prepositions. Welsh has both VSO and prepositions (a). English has prepositions but not VSO (c). Japanese- no VSO, no prepositions (d). However, possibility number (b) no prepositions, but VSO is not attested. In formulating implicational universals, it is always important that the rigid interpretations of material implication be followed, and in particular to note that a given implicational universal always allows three of the logical possibilities while disallowing one, that counts as a counter example to an implicational universal. For certain properties of language, it seems that we can state whether they found in natural language without reference to any other properties of the given language. For instance, ‘all languages have vowels’ makes absolutely no reference to any other item that must or must not be present. These are called Non-implicational universals.
Greenberg’s list also produced another parameter along which universals may be classified, namely distinction between absolute universals and universal tendencies, to which there are exceptions. An example of a tendency is the following (from Greenberg 1963):
"With overwhelmingly more than chance frequency, languages with dominant order VSO have the adjective after the noun. The existence of such tendencies makes perfect sense within the functionalist framework. It is asserted that the limits to cross-linguistic variation emerge from the requirements of language use, but functional pressures may take a while to make their effects felt through language change".
Linguists working in the Greenbergian tradition allow for variation in the explanation of the existence of the universals, which they isolate. It is considered possible that some universals may require one type of explanation, while others may require explanation of another kind. For instance, some universals, such as the fact that all languages have at least three persons and two numbers may be explained from the point of view of discourse pragmatics. This Functional and Pragmatic approach to explanation of language universals argue that certain universals serve to make language more functional, either as a communication system or as more, particularly relative to the communicative needs of humans. Comrie (1989, p.28) proposes a similar explanation of the fact the existence of first or second person reflexive forms in a language implies the existence of third-person reflexive.
Some language universals may be explained by some reference to the Processing demands placed on language users. This explanation appeal to two major considerations: human beings are limited capacity machines- there memory constraints and the relative ease or difficulty involved in processing certain structures in comprehension and production.
To some extent, for certain properties language universals are explainable in terms of human perceptual and cognitive apparatus (Hawkins, 1988 p.17). If a language has Color system, it will distinguish at least black and white. If it has three colors, the third will be red, if it has four, then the fourth will be either green or yellow. Hawkins (1988) cites Kay and McDaniel to point out that this universal can be explained by reference to the neural anatomy of the color vision of the humans.
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