Universals for the New Structural Level of Clause Representation

Solovyev, Valery Institute for University Language Sejong Instituti 2002 Journal of Universal Language Vol.3 No.2

A new predicate-argument relation is introduced in this paper. Some arguments of the verb are distinguished as central to the base of surface making. Information transfers from arguments to the verb are critical items of distinguishment; central arguments can be found in every language. While offering information transfers and centers classifications, this paper shows that the main property of centers is the scope of semantic roles accessible for central argument. Furthermore, this paper analyzes the relationship between the offered conception and well-known conceptions (subject, focus, etc.). This conception reveals a new view of the passive. In this paper, active passive relations are interpreted as a choice of center position, but not as a transformation. The offered conception can be used to create a new language typology on the base of center properties.

Situation Aspect as a Universal Aspect : Implications for Artificial Languages

Xiao, Zhonghua,Anthony McEnery Institute for University Language Sejong Instituti 2002 Journal of Universal Language Vol.3 No.2

Aspect, as one of the elements of verb mechanics, has been over-looked by many language designers. This paper argues that an artificial language, designed as a universal language for international communication, should incorporate the "universal" component of aspect found cross-linguistically in natural languages. In doing so, the paper develops a two-level model of situation aspect in which situation aspect is modelled as verb classes at the lexical level and as situation types at the sentential level. With a framework consisting of a lexicon, a layered clause structure and a set of mapping rules, the model is developed and tested using an English corpus and a Chinese corpus.

Universal Perceptual Attributes for Perception of American English Vowels by English and Japanese Native Speakers and Implications for Language Typology

Marasinghe, Ashuboda,Lambacher, Stephen,Martens, William,Cohen, Michael,Giragama, Charith,Herath, Susantha,Molholt, Garry Institute for University Language Sejong Instituti 2003 Journal of Universal Language Vol.4 No.2

A universal perceptual space for 10 American English vowel sounds was derived for two groups of listeners-a group of native speakers of English and a group of native speakers of Japanese. Subsets of these two groups made ratings on 12 bipolar adjective scales for the same set of sounds, each of the two groups using anchoring adjectives taken from their native language. Although there was no evidence of any difference between the two groups in their INDSCAL-derived perceptual dimensions for these vowel sounds, the adjectives were sued differently in describing those same perceptual dimensions by the two groups. Though a few of the adjectives were used to describe similar perceptual variations, language typological implications of this investigation is that caution be exercised in generalizing semantic differential ratings obtained in one language, especially when those ratings are intended to aid in the interpretation of data from listeners speaking a different native language.

The Struggle against Monolingualism

Jendraschek, Gerd Institute for University Language Sejong Instituti 2002 Journal of Universal Language Vol.3 No.1

Speakers of regional and minority languages frequently have to choose among two or more languages, a choice that can be crucial to the future of the less powerful language. The monolingualism of the majority of Europeans is in many cases a result of a monolingual language policy. One challenge to this monolingual ideology is english, but the international role of English does not make regional languages superfluous, as these continue to have an important sociocultural function for their communities. However, only the stronger ones among the regional languages can hope to survive. Completely artificial languages designed as a neutral tool in international communication suffer from the absence of a real community that could support them. As a consequence, only multilingualism can offer some kind of solution to the problems of interlingual communication.

Borrowing for a Universal Language

Chung, Young-Hee Institute for University Language Sejong Instituti 2001 Journal of Universal Language Vol.2 No.1

This paper is a proposal to develop a universal list of vocabulary made up of borrowings from major languages of the world. This proposal depends on the observation that vocabulary is relatively vunerable to foreign influence. In other words, universal vocabulary is to be made up of borrowing from several different languages, just like vocabulary of natural languages is in part made up of loanwords from various languages. Such cosmopolitan vocabulary will have several advantages including linguistic neutrality.

English, Unish, and an Ideal International Language : From a Perspective of Speech Sound and Writing System

Jung, Young-Hee Institute for University Language Sejong Instituti 2004 Journal of Universal Language Vol.5 No.2

In recent years, as international communication has become more frequent and significant, the obstacle that foreign language pose is more keenly felt and so the linguistic variety of the present world has become a heavy burden on international communication. In order to facilitate an international communication, various artificial languages have been constructed. In this paper, I examine Unish, one of the recently constructed artificial languages, and English, a dominant language of the present world, from the perspective of phonetics, phonology, and writing system. I argue that an ideal international language should not contain speech sounds that are not easy to produce, and its writing system should be phonemic. Unish, I show, contains consonant sounds that are not easy to produce. Writing system of Unish is in part not phonemic. English is found to contain too many vowel sounds, the aspect that makes acquisition of English difficult. Spelling system of English is the most problematic about English as an international language. An ideal international that is proposed contains the most frequent and easy-to-produce seventeen consonant sounds. It has a basic five-vowel system and its writing system is perfectly phonemic.

When Old Paradigms Die, New Paradigms are Born : On the Eternal Cycle of Morphological Change and its Importance for Language Typology

Jendraschek, Gerd Institute for University Language Sejong Instituti 2003 Journal of Universal Language Vol.4 No.2

All languages change all the time, and the changes concern different linguistic domains. The first half of the present article will focus on the verbal morphology of Basque, a language where synthetic and periphrastic verb forms co-exist. Diachronically, the periphrastic forms have replaced most of the synthetic forms. The comparison of northern and southern varieties leads t interesting conclusions. Apart from obvious lexical differences, we can observe differences in the morphosyntax of the southern and northern standard, as speakers form the South use more morphological, synthetic forms, whereas northern speakers prefer analytical forms. Although the loss of synthetic forms has been observed for centuries, the dramatic loss of morphological complexity in the North seems to be a recent phenomenon. This morphological erosion is gradual. The study of synchronic and diachronic variation in Basque reveals that morphologically more complex forms and those representing marked categories are eliminated first, whereas shorter and more frequent forms are retained longest. In the second part of the paper, it will be shown that the universality of the phenomena described for Basque can be confirmed by data from other languages. In conclusion, the different data demonstrate how condensation of frequent forms and paradigmatic harmonization of isolated forms are responsible for the eternal cycle of morphological change.

Possibilities for Passives in Natural and Artificial Languages

Moskovsky, Christo,Libert, Alan Institute for University Language Sejong Instituti 2004 Journal of Universal Language Vol.5 No.2

The Passive Voice is a category which we find in the large majority of natural languages, and also in most artificial languages. The first major part of this paper offers a survey of passive constructions in a number of typologically distinct natural languages, with the basic aim of presenting the (prospective) artificial language constructor with the range of functional and formal properties of the Passive Voice which occur in natural languages. This survey shows that regardless of the fair amount of variation in the morphosyntactic form of passives that we find in different natural languages, crosslinguistically passives are remarkably uniform in inevitably occurring as a grammatical category marked (synthetically or analytically) on the verb; they are also remarkably uniform in relation to the basic function they perform: passivization inevitably involves demotion of a primary clausal term (the Subject) and in most of the cases also promotion of a non-primary term. The next part of the paper offers an overview of Passive Voice formation and function in artificial languages, which will provide the language constructor with a good idea of some of the `design' decisions taken with regard to this grammatical category. Finally, the paper briefly discusses various design issues in relation to economy, explicitness/ambiguity, functionality, and learnability and presents some specific recommendations with regard to the possible design of passives in an artificial language.

Like WTO, Why not WCO?

Read, Stuart Institute for University Language Sejong Instituti 2001 Journal of Universal Language Vol.2 No.1

As the effect of globalization has been to increase the level of language contact between speakers of different languages, English becomes to stand out as the leading world language as people express their need for a common tongue. However, this paper objects to English as a world language. In addition, this paper is against any other natural languages as well as multilingualism. Instead, this paper claims that the adoption of an artificial or "planned" language could a possible solution.

Languages and Universals

Odden, David Institute for University Language Sejong Instituti 2003 Journal of Universal Language Vol.4 No.1

A central question of linguistic research for nearly a half century has been whether there are properties universal to all human languages. There are many ways of conceptualizing linguistic universals, but at the core, the idea of linguistic universals asserts that some observed properties of human language are arbitrary-the fact that “dog” is pronounced [d??g] in English, [kæ] in Korean and [mbwa] in Swahili-but a number of facts of language are not random and arbitrary. If there are non-random properties of linguistic structure, questions arise regarding those properties: what are they; how do we identify them; why do they exist?