12 - Typological Universals

Question 1

What are the two schools of language universals?

Answer 1

Typological Universals (TU) and Universal Grammar (UG)

Question 2

What is markedness?

Answer 2

The state of standing out as unusual or difficult in comparison to a more common or regular form.

Question 3

How does TU arrive at markedness?

Answer 3

• Greenberg broke from the traditional view and said that frequency is the primary determining factor of markedness
• cross-linguistically, he said that unmarked categories would be those that are more frequent in a wide number of languages

Question 4

What did Greenberg do in the field of Typological Linguistics?

Answer 4

He developed statements about what he believed to be true of all languages - the typological universals
- He said that universals are determined on the basis of cross-linguistics comparisons of all languages

Question 5

What is the Markedness Differential Hypothesis?

Answer 5

• MDH uses markedness alongside comparison to predict learner difficulty
• it says that the areas of the L2 which differ form the L1 and are more marked than L1 will be difficult
• it also says that the relative degree of markedness corresponds to the relative degree of difficulty
• Therefore, the areas of the L2 which are different from teh L1 but are not more marked than L1 will not be difficult

Question 6

What evidence supports MDH?

Answer 6

1. Directionality of Difficulty - where two learners of different L1 learning the other’s language, one will have more difficulty learning an aspect than the other will learning that same aspect
2. The degree of difficulty corresponds to the degree of markedness - the more marked and different an aspect of an L2 is than L1, the more difficult it will be

Question 7

Where did the Interlanguage Structural Conformity Hypothesis stem from?

Answer 7

• ISCH was developed because it was found that while MDH was able to explain a lot of learner errors, there were still some that it could not
• The hypothesis was then developed to fill those gaps

Question 8

What is the ISCH?

Answer 8

It says that those universal generalizations that hold for primary languages also hold for interlanguages and this similarity makes them equal
- Looks beyond MDH to include areas beyond the area of difference between the native language and target language

Question 9

What evidence supports ISCH?

Answer 9

The error patterns that occur in L2 do not occur in the area of difference between the L1 and the L2

• Eckman’s studies with the consonant clusters in the onset or coda position
• more marked structures may appear in L2 production