6
Are there universal words, and what are they?
(feddit.de)
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
this post was submitted on 22 Jun 2023
6 points (100.0% liked)
No Stupid Questions
35945 readers
793 users here now
No such thing. Ask away!
!nostupidquestions is a community dedicated to being helpful and answering each others' questions on various topics.
The rules for posting and commenting, besides the rules defined here for lemmy.world, are as follows:
Rules (interactive)
Rule 1- All posts must be legitimate questions. All post titles must include a question.
All posts must be legitimate questions, and all post titles must include a question. Questions that are joke or trolling questions, memes, song lyrics as title, etc. are not allowed here. See Rule 6 for all exceptions.
Rule 2- Your question subject cannot be illegal or NSFW material.
Your question subject cannot be illegal or NSFW material. You will be warned first, banned second.
Rule 3- Do not seek mental, medical and professional help here.
Do not seek mental, medical and professional help here. Breaking this rule will not get you or your post removed, but it will put you at risk, and possibly in danger.
Rule 4- No self promotion or upvote-farming of any kind.
That's it.
Rule 5- No baiting or sealioning or promoting an agenda.
Questions which, instead of being of an innocuous nature, are specifically intended (based on reports and in the opinion of our crack moderation team) to bait users into ideological wars on charged political topics will be removed and the authors warned - or banned - depending on severity.
Rule 6- Regarding META posts and joke questions.
Provided it is about the community itself, you may post non-question posts using the [META] tag on your post title.
On fridays, you are allowed to post meme and troll questions, on the condition that it's in text format only, and conforms with our other rules. These posts MUST include the [NSQ Friday] tag in their title.
If you post a serious question on friday and are looking only for legitimate answers, then please include the [Serious] tag on your post. Irrelevant replies will then be removed by moderators.
Rule 7- You can't intentionally annoy, mock, or harass other members.
If you intentionally annoy, mock, harass, or discriminate against any individual member, you will be removed.
Likewise, if you are a member, sympathiser or a resemblant of a movement that is known to largely hate, mock, discriminate against, and/or want to take lives of a group of people, and you were provably vocal about your hate, then you will be banned on sight.
Rule 8- All comments should try to stay relevant to their parent content.
Rule 9- Reposts from other platforms are not allowed.
Let everyone have their own content.
Rule 10- Majority of bots aren't allowed to participate here.
Credits
Our breathtaking icon was bestowed upon us by @Cevilia!
The greatest banner of all time: by @TheOneWithTheHair!
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
Just to counter the "Mother" example, in Finnish the word is "äiti". One could argue "mamma" is also used, but in my opinion it's just Swedish influence and not really used in the Eastern parts.
The topic is very interesting however, and recently I've read about the theory of universal grammar https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_grammar which is a theory roughly saying that every human has an innate biological understanding for certain rules of grammar - independent of upbringing, culture and the like. For example, every human language will distinguish between nouns and vowels and verbs. The concept is fascinating, but so is the criticism. You could argue that the whole idea is just unfalsifiable pseudoscience or post-hoc explanation for what has been observed.
Funny enough, in Russian side Karelian they call mother "muamo".
Äiti is a loan word from Gothic "aiþei", which is quite interesting as such words aren't usually loaned to replace the original. The original Finnish word for mother is "emä", but this is not used about humans anymore.
Interesting, didn't know that!
Regarding the "mother" example: Most languages also feature words that describe "mother" but don't follow the pattern (e.g. "mother").
I meant the word that is used by babies/small children and in connection with babies/small children.
Does this apply to "äiti"? (Serious question, I have no idea of the Finnish language).
I always figured it's because it's one of the first sounds a baby can consciously make.
Universal grammar sounds very interesting, and the criticism is a well. But yeah, it's kinda hard to falsify this.
On the other hand, these basic elements that universal grammar identifies seem to me (=>not a linguist) like something you can't do without. I wouldn't know what a language would do e.g. without a noun/verb separation. There are things and there are actions, which are two fundamentally different concepts. Makes sense that this separation exists in every language.