A
linguistic universal is a pattern that occurs systematically across
natural languages, potentially true for all of them. For example,
All languages have nouns and verbs, or
If a language is spoken, it has consonants and vowels. Research in this area of
linguistics is closely tied to the study of
linguistic typology, and intends to reveal generalizations across languages, likely tied to
cognition,
perception, or other abilities of the mind. The field was largely pioneered by the linguist
Joseph Greenberg, who derived a set of forty-five basic universals, mostly dealing with
syntax, from a study of some thirty languages.