Ministry of higher and secondary special education of the republic uzbekistan state world languages university

Language Universals
are bound to theunification 
of language facts, identifying common/similar features 
specific to systems of all or 
separate language groups. 
The notion of Language 
Universals appeared in 1961 
at the Congress of Linguists 
in New York where 
Joseph 
Greenberg
, J. Jenkins, and I. Osgood proposed a 
Memorandum on Language/Linguistic Universals". 
They defined it as follows: "A Linguistic Universal is a 
certain feature specific to all languages of the world or 
the language per se." 
There are many general universals concerning all languages of the world. 
They are:
Wherever humans exist, language exists.
 
There are no "primitive" languages - all languages are equally complex and 
equally capable of expressing any idea in the world.
The vocabulary of any language can be expanded to include new words for 
new concepts. 
All languages change through time. 
The relationship between the sounds and meanings of spoken languages and 
between the gestures (signs) and meanings of sign languages are for the most part 
arbitrary. 
All human languages utilize a finite set of discrete sounds (or gestures) that 
are combined to form meaningful elements or words, which themselves form an 
infinite set of possible sentences. 
All grammars contain rules for the formation of words and sentences of a 
similar kind. 

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Every spoken language includes discrete sound segments like p, n, or a, 
which can be defined by a finite set of sound properties or features. 
Every spoken language has a class of vowels and a class of consonants. 
Similar grammatical categories (for example, noun, verb) are found in all 
languages. 
There are semantic universals, such as "male" or "female," "animate" or "hu-
man," found in every language in the world. 
Every language has a way of referring to past time, forming questions, issu-
ing commands, and so on. 
Speakers of all languages are capable of producing and comprehending an 
infinite set of sentences. 
The universals may be classified according to various principles. For 
example, according to the statistic principle, there are unrestricted (absolute or full) 
universals opposed to restricted (relative, partial) universals (some scholars prefer 
the term "tendency" instead of "universal"). According to language hierarchy, there 
are phonetic, morphological, syntactic and lexical universals. Other types include 
deductive and inductive; synchronic and diachronic universals; universals of 
speech and universals of language. 
For example, universals related to the levels of language hierarchy: