Phil. Trans. R. Soc.

B (2011) 366, 376388

doi:10.1098/rstb.2010.0223

Review

Unity and diversity in human language

W. Tecumseh Fitch*
Department of Cognitive Biology, University of Vienna, 1010 Vienna, Austria
Human language is both highly diversedifferent languages have different ways of achieving the
same functional goalsand easily learnable. Any language allows its users to express virtually any
thought they can conceptualize. These traits render human language unique in the biological
world. Understanding the biological basis of language is thus both extremely challenging and fundamentally interesting. I review the literature on linguistic diversity and language universals,
suggesting that an adequate notion of formal universals provides a promising way to understand
the facts of language acquisition, offering order in the face of the diversity of human languages.
Formal universals are cross-linguistic generalizations, often of an abstract or implicational nature.
They derive from cognitive capacities to perceive and process particular types of structures and
biological constraints upon integration of the multiple systems involved in language. Such formal
universals can be understood on the model of a general solution to a set of differential equations;
each language is one particular solution. An explicit formal conception of human language that
embraces both considerable diversity and underlying biological unity is possible, and fully
compatible with modern evolutionary theory.
Keywords: language universals; language diversity; glossogeny; universal grammar

1. INTRODUCTION
Because of its central role in human culture and
cognition, language has long been a core concern in
discussions about human evolution. Languages are
learned and culturally transmitted over generations,
and vary considerably between human cultures. But
any normal child from any part of the world can, if
exposed early enough, easily learn any language,
suggesting a universal genetic basis for language acquisition. In contrast, chimpanzees, our nearest living
relatives, are unable to acquire language in anything
like its human form. This indicates some key components of the genetic basis for this human ability
evolved in the last 5 6 Myr of human evolution, but
went to fixation before the diaspora of humans out of
Africa roughly 50 000 years ago. Darwin recognized
a dual basis for language in biology and culture:
language is . . . not a true instinct, for every language
has to be learnt. It differs, however, widely from all
ordinary arts, for man has an instinctive tendency to
speak, as we see in the babble of our young children;
while no child has an instinctive tendency to brew,
bake or write [1, p. 55].
Attempts to understand the diversity or the unity of
human languages can select as their focus from among
a variety of potential genetic, developmental and cultural/historical explanatory factors. As a result, the
literature on human language universals is full of competing models and long-running arguments, spanning

many disciplines including linguistics, evolutionary

biology, anthropology, psychology and history.
My goal in this review is to summarize and synthesize
this often contentious literature from a biological viewpoint, surveying both abstract universals underlying
human language and the considerable diversity of
human languages.
My starting point will be the perspective on
language developed by Darwin [1], in which all
humans are born with an instinctual desire to learn
language, and the neural equipment to do so.
Darwin emphasized the aspects of human cognition
shared with other animals, but he also recognized
that certain aspects of our behaviour demand special
explanation. Considering the biology of language,
Darwin saw birdsong as the nearest animal analogue,
because young songbirds must learn their song by
listening to conspecifics. This leads to dialect differences within a species, partly analogous to the
diversity of languages. In modern terms, both birdsong
and language are acquired via a specialized instinct
to learn [2]. Despite a polarizing tendency among
modern scholars to classify human language as either
learned or innate, a Darwinian perspective explicitly
embraces both of these factors (cf. [3]).
My second core assumption is that the human
capacity to acquire language is composed of multiple
separable but interacting mechanisms, no one of
which alone is adequate for language acquisition
[4,5]. While some of these mechanisms may be
unique to humans and to language (the subset
termed faculty of language in the narrow sense
(FLN) by [5]), most of them will be shared in what
we termed the faculty of language in a broad sense

*tecumseh.fitch@univie.ac.at
One contribution of 14 to a Theme Issue Evolution and human
behavioural diversity.

376

This journal is q 2011 The Royal Society

Review. Language unity and diversity

(FLB). Clearly, this broad set of mechanisms, not the
uniquely human subset, makes up the human
instinct to learn language. It is irrelevant to the
child acquiring language whether some component
of its innate endowment is unique to our species, or
shared broadly with other primates or vertebrates;
what matters is that the capacity itself need not be
learned, and thus provides a leg up during language
acquisition.
If most of the mechanisms underlying human
language are shared with other species or cognitive
domains, why mention FLN at all? One reason is
interdisciplinary: for many scholars, particularly linguists, the term language connotes this special
subset of cognitive mechanisms, and FLN provides a
moniker that is less apt to be misunderstood than
language. Thus, statements about language that
might seem non-sensical, applied to FLB, may be perfectly reasonable if they concern FLN. Another
important reason is cautionary: that subset of mechanisms that comprise the FLN will be the most resistant
to comparative study, and their study will be particularly difficult and may demand different approaches
than most aspects of human biology. But, as clearly
stated by Fitch et al. [4], FLN is not the only, or
even the most, important focus of biolinguistic
research. This point will resurface repeatedly in the
current paper.
A final set of assumptions incorporates some widely
accepted observations from modern linguistics. First,
although every child can learn their native language(s)
with little or no explicit tuition, language acquisition is
a supremely complex task [6]. Despite five decades of
research, and billions in funding, our most powerful
computers are still not up to the task. Nor have linguists been able to create a complete and adequate
grammar for any single language. The second observation is that every language can flexibly and
creatively communicate thoughts between its speakers
and listeners [7]. Although languages vary considerably in the ways in which they do so, and in the
complexity of different subcomponents of language,
no language is in toto superior or more complex
than any other (possible exceptions include very
young languages, such as creoles, but even here
opinions are divided [8,9]). The persistent notion
that some languages are better than others, in one
way or another, is today seen as a parochial myth.
Third, a vast store of information in any human
language must be learned (least controversially, every
word of every language is learned), and thus contemporary debates concern not this fact, but whether a
human child is born with a set of mechanisms or
constraints that help this learning along [10,11].
No linguist believes that language is innate in any
simple superficial sense.
Beyond these basic facts, both the existence of
language universals and their innate basis are highly
controversial topics. Despite a long history of study
(starting with [12]), even the existence of language
universals has recently been termed a myth [13].
Although few modern commentators deny that the
childs capacity to rapidly acquire its language(s)
rests upon some genetic basis, debate rages over
Phil. Trans. R. Soc. B (2011)

W. T. Fitch

377

whether this genetically given endowment is specific

to humans or specific to language (e.g. [4,14,15])
and whether it represents a specific adaptation for
language or an unselected by-product of other factors
such as constraints on brain development [16 20].
While many see the cultural evolution of individual
languages as a route to understanding the biological
basis for language acquisition [21], others see it as
an argument against any evolved genetic basis [22].
Still others see cultural change as demanding new
paradigms for thinking about language as an evolved
trait [23,24]. Recent attempts to extend biological
theory and methodology to incorporate cultural
change include phylogenetic techniques originally
developed by evolutionary biologists [25], extension
of niche construction theory to the cultural domain
[26] and development of selection-based models of
cultural evolution and cultural group selection [27
29]. At present, these new perspectives remain
poorly integrated into the long-running debate concerning linguistic universals and diversity.
In this review, I begin by defining some terminology, and then concisely review the literature
concerning language universals and language diversity. This review clearly indicates that both diversity
and universality of various kinds exist, and require
biological explanation. I argue that the traditional
approach to this problem, which dichotomizes
between general purpose and specially adapted
mechanisms, leads down a blind alley, and has been
an unproductive focus of debate. I suggest that a
focus on specific neural and genetic mechanisms
involved in language acquisition is more likely to be
illuminating, and that such mechanisms are unlikely
to fall into neat categories, whether psychological
(e.g. specialized versus general purpose) or linguistic
(e.g. phonology, syntax and semantics). A generalized
evolutionary theory incorporating both cultural and
phylogenetic change must both embrace linguistic
diversity and continue searching for language universals and their mechanistic basis. As in biology more
generally, a thorough study of diversity is necessary
to delineate universal constraints. These are not competing, alternative approaches. Finally, as a first step
in this direction, I sketch a conceptual framework,
modelled on differential equations, that easily incorporates unity and diversity into a comprehensive,
explicit framework.

(a) Terminology
I use language to denote any system that freely allows
concepts to be mapped to signals, where the mapping
is bi-directional (going from concepts to signals and
vice versa) and exhaustive (any concept, even one
never before considered, can be so mapped). Although
there is nothing restricting language to humans in this
definition, by current knowledge only humans possess
a communication system with these properties.
Although all animals communicate, and all vertebrates
(at least) have concepts, most animal communication
systems allow only a small subset of an individuals
concepts to be expressed as signals (e.g. threats,
mating, food or alarm calls, etc.).

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Review. Language unity and diversity

I will restrict my use of the term evolution to

change in gene frequency in populations (its modern
Darwinian sense). Considerable misunderstandings
have been created by the use of language evolution
to refer to the purely cultural, historical process
whereby a language like Latin morphed over time
into French, Spanish or Italian; I adopt the term
glossogeny to refer to this form of cultural, historical
change, following Hurford [30], and when necessary
phylogeny to denote biological evolution. Study
of the biology of language must include both
phylogenetic and glossogenetic components [3,31].
Darwin freely used the words innate and instinct
[1,32,33], but, despite its wide use in psychology and
linguistics [34] and despite some impassioned biological defences [35], the term innate is today seen by
some biologists as hopelessly confused and confusing
(e.g.[36]). Nonetheless, some genetic basis for
language acquisition is implied by the very notion
that the instinct to learn language evolved. The
term innate can defensibly be used as a shorthand
for reliably developing or canalized [37]. An
instinct is any innate cognitive mechanism or behaviour pattern, including those mechanisms underlying
learning. Thus, there is no contradiction in postulating
an instinct to learn language [2,38,39], and seeing its
study as a central component of biological linguistics.
Only an outmoded and oversimplistic view sees
nature and nurture as dichotomous opposing explanations, rather than complementary aspects of
epigenetic developmental explanations [40].

2. UNITY AND DIVERSITY OF LANGUAGE FROM

THE VIEWPOINT OF LINGUISTICS
(a) Language universals and universal
grammar
Although the modern use of the term universal grammar is today mostly connected with the ideas of Noam
Chomsky, both the term and concept have a far older
history (cf. [41,42]). In its original usage, universal
grammar denoted those aspects of a language that
are so general and widely shared that they do not
need to be mentioned in the particular grammar of
any one language. For example, in 1788, James Beattie
said of languages that though each has peculiarities,
whereby it is distinguished from every other, yet all
have certain qualities in common. The peculiarities
of individual tongues are explained in their respective
grammars and dictionaries. Those things, that all
languages have in common, or that are necessary to
every language, are treated of in a science, which
some have called universal or philosophical grammar
(quoted in [41]). Such facts as languages contain
meaningful words or utterances express meanings
were seen as too obvious to require mention in a grammar of Latin or French. Of course, such general
principles might not be obvious to a Martian or a
chimpanzee; obvious does not imply logically
necessary. Understanding this broadly shared basis
for language, whatever it might be, was seen as
central to understanding human nature by many
eighteenth-century philosophers.
Phil. Trans. R. Soc. B (2011)

In this original form, there was a fairly transparent

connection between the notion of language universals
and universal grammar, and one implied the other.
However, by the 1960s a far broader understanding
of the worlds linguistic diversity made it seem unlikely
that all languages would share any particular
superficial features. In a seminal volume, a team of
structuralist linguists led by Joseph Greenberg initiated
the modern search for universals with an acknowledgement of this fact [12]. Greenberg and colleagues
distinguished between several classes of regularities
universals in a somewhat extended sense
[43, p. xviii]. Such regularities go beyond the truly universal regularities expected by Beattie. In particular,
this new search for cross-linguistic regularities sought
two new categories of universal. Universal implications take the form that if x is present in a
language, then y will be as well. For example, if a
language has a dual case, it will have a plural as well.
Such implications might be true of all languages, without implying that either x or y is present in all
languages. Such implications took a first crucial step
towards the kind of abstraction that characterizes
modern approaches to language universals [12,4446].
Greenberg and colleagues also discussed what they
called statistical universals, which are of the form for
every language, x is more probable than y or if a
language has x, then it is more likely to have y
than z. An example of the first type is that suffixing
is more common than prefixing which is more
common than infixing. The second type is illustrated
by the fact that, with only a few exceptions, languages
that mark gender in the second person also mark it in
the third person. Finally, Greenberg and colleagues
highlighted the search for relationships among different
universals. For example, the existence of double consonants at the beginning of a syllable implies, for all
languages, the existence of single consonants (but
not vice versa). Similarly, triple consonant clusters
imply double consonant clusters. These two regularities are related by a more abstract rule: (for n .
0), if n consonants can cluster, so can n 2 1
consonants.
A different class of universals were highlighted
by the linguist Charles Hockett, who reasoned that a
search for universals should start by comparing
human language with animal communication systems
[47]. Amplifying upon his famous design features
of human language [48], he argued that all spoken
languages show a wide variety of universal traits
(table 1), and that this combination of features is
found in no other species. While some of these features
would be modified today (e.g. Hockett focused only on
spoken language, while today linguists agree that
signed languages are full, complete human languages),
many have stood the test of time. Increasing knowledge has revealed occasional exceptions to features
that Hockett viewed as absolute universals, rendering
them (highly probably) statistical generalizations
rather than strictly present in every language.
A recent example is duality of patterning. Languages
use a limited set of meaningless items (phonemes) to
build up a much larger set of meaningful words, and
then, at a second level, recombine these words into

Review. Language unity and diversity

W. T. Fitch

379

Table 1. Hocketts design features of language, and resulting universals.

Hocketts [48] design features of language (defining features in bold)
1 vocal auditory channelsignal modality involves vocalization and sound perception
2 broadcast transmissioneveryone in earshot can hear what is said
3 rapid fadingsignals fade quickly, and do not clog the airwaves
4 interchangeabilityany speaker can also be a listener, and vice versa
5 total feedbackspeakers can hear everything that they say
6 specialization (speech as trigger)linguistic signals accomplish their results not via raw energy (as in pushing or biting)
but by their fit to the receivers perceptual and cognitive systems
7 semanticitysome linguistic units have specific meanings (words or morphemes)
8 arbitrarinessmeanings are generally arbitrarily related to signals, rather than iconic
9 discretenesseach utterance differs from all others discretely (by at least a distinctive feature)
10 displacementmeanings about past, future or distant referents can be encoded and understood
11 productivity/opennessnew utterances can be readily coined and understood
12 duality of patterningmeaningless units (phonemes) are combined into meaningful ones (morphemes), which can
then be combined into larger meaningful units (sentences)
13 traditional (cultural) transmissionlanguages are learned, not genetically encoded
Hockett [47]: additional design features
14 prevaricationit is possible to lie
15 reflexivityit is possible to use language to talk about language
16 learnabilityit is possible for a speaker of one language to learn additional languages
Hockett [47]: language universals resulting from design features (an abridged list)
1 every human community has a language
2 every human language has tradition, but also changes over time
every language
1 can express unrestricted meanings (displacement/productivity)
2 has duality of patterning (both meaningless and meaningful units)
3 has both an intonational and non-intonational system
4 has shifters: deictic elements, personal or demonstrative pronouns, etc.
5 has elements that denote nothing, but effect the denotation of the composite form in which they occur (markers or
function words)
6 has proper names
7 has a vowel system
8 has a tendency towards phonological symmetry, but nonetheless has gaps or asymmetries
9 contrasts stops with non-stops

sentences that also have meaning. Research on a

recently developed Bedouin sign language suggests
that this language, alone in the world, lacks such duality of patterning [8]. But this single exception does
not invalidate the regularity. Instead, it suggests that
a new language must exist for more than a few generations before it develops duality during glossogeny.
Furthermore, this exception offers the exciting possibility of observing and studying the emergence of a
language universal, of catching glossogeny in the act
of generating a design principle of language.
In summary, from its beginnings, the modern linguistic quest for language universals has sought
probabilistic regularities that are abstract and implicational (rather than universally present). The authors
assembled by Greenberg [12] also saw the statement
of universals as a first step in discovering the principles
of language acquisition, psycholinguistics or
sociology that create such static patterns, and sought
to understand both regularities and the processes
that generate them. Finally, they recognized that the
discovery of language universals, in this extended
sense of abstract cross-linguistic generalizations, particularly in comparison with communication systems
in other animals, must play an important role in a
biological understanding of human language.
Phil. Trans. R. Soc. B (2011)

(b) Universal grammar and Noam Chomsky

At roughly the same time, a revolution was occurring in
linguistics, with the introduction of generative linguistics by Noam Chomsky and his colleagues (cf. [49]).
Chomsky broke with the previous structuralist tradition
in several ways, but the most relevant here is that he
emphasized the complexity of syntax, and thus the seemingly miraculous fact that every child implicitly does
what generations of linguists have so far failed to
achieve explicitly: learn the complete grammar of a
language. Chomsky argued that the child comes into
the world biologically equipped to learn language,
and adapted the old term universal grammar to
denote this innate biological endowment, whatever it
might be. Chomsky also highlighted its essential role
in the universal creative aspects of every language,
which provides the means for expressing indefinitely
many thoughts and for reacting appropriately in an
indefinite range of new situations [41, p. 6]the property that most clearly distinguishes language from other
animal communication systems. Chomskys new
interpretation of the term universal grammar (henceforth abbreviated UG) thus placed the creative,
productive aspect of language at centre stage.
Chomsky extended the abstraction of the term universal even further than Greenberg and colleagues,

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Review. Language unity and diversity

recognizing two further categories of abstract universal. Substantive universals make claims about the
inventory of units from which a language is built.
For example, structuralist phonologists argued that
all phonemes of all languages are built up of a small
set of distinctive features (such as voiced/unvoiced)
and the Port Royal Grammarians suggested that all
languages must have nouns and verbs. Chomsky
further suggested that each language will contain
terms that designate persons or lexical items referring
to certain specific kinds of objects, feelings, behaviour,
and so on [41, p. 28]. Substantive universals are regularities at a relatively superficial descriptive level.
Chomsky also highlighted a second more abstract
type of universal. Formal universals involve the
types of rules and regularities that can occur in a
language, and the ways in which they can interact. In
syntax, for example, a core idea of generative grammar
is that phrases and sentences have a tree-like structure:
they cannot be fully understood as simple strings of
words. An example of a formal universal would be
that syntactic rules apply to such trees (rather than,
say, serial word order) and thus that syntactic rules
need to be stated in structural rather than serial
terms. At the semantic level, Chomsky proposed
that proper names . . . must designate objects meeting
a condition of spatio-temporal contiguity or that
colour words of any language must subdivide the
colour spectrum into continuous segments as
examples of plausible formal universals. Note that
there is no restriction in these examples to syntax,
nor stipulation that such formal universals are somehow encapsulated to language: the colour example
clearly involves an interface to the sensory world of
vision to even be meaningful. Indeed, Chomsky
emphasized that we do not, of course, imply that
the functions of language acquisition are carried out
by entirely separate components of the abstract mind
or the physical brain and that it is an important
problem for psychology to determine to what extent
other aspects of cognition share properties of
language acquisition and language use . . . to develop
a richer and more comprehensive theory of mind
[41, p. 207]. Thus, despite a possible connotation
that universal grammar is specific to syntax, or to
language more broadly, Chomsky specifically denied
any strict separation of language and other aspects
of the human mind in his re-introduction of this term.
The notion that UG concerns only syntax is probably
the most pernicious of a number of common misinterpretations of UG; see ch. 4 of Jackendoff [50] for a
more complete list, and rebuttals.
UG is thus nothing more or less than an abstract
characterization of the human language faculty
(FLB)the instinct to learn languageincluding all
of its mechanisms and their interactions. It is unsurprising that the last 40 years have seen considerable
debate concerning its nature: we would not expect
the formidable task of characterizing this key element
of human cognition to yield easily to linguistic
research. Thus, many researchers united in their
search for the innate basis of the FLB have offered
diverse approaches to linguistic theory, representing
different theoretical gambits concerning the contents
Phil. Trans. R. Soc. B (2011)

and nature of this faculty. Chomskys most recent

tack is dubbed The Minimalist Programme [51]
because it seeks to reduce those aspects of the
human mind that are specific to language and syntax
to a bare minimum, perhaps as little as one powerful
operation called Merge. Most other universal features of language acquisition would then result
from other aspects of the human mind (cognitive,
perceptual or motor skills), or from the interactions
of these cognitive mechanisms with this minimal
syntactic core.
In contrast, more elaborate models of UG posit an
extensive suite of human- and language-specific mechanisms, running the gamut from speech perceptual
and vocal tract adaptations to high-level syntactic
structures [14,50,52]. An increasingly popular formalism called optimality theory [53,54] posits an innate
set of constraints on language and proposes that
language acquisition requires the developing child to
implicitly rank these constraints. Radical construction
grammar proposes that abstract universals will only be
found in the patterned variation of constructions and
the categories they define [55, p. 5]. Numerous
theorists have suggested that universals result from
processing or other performance constraints
(cf. [24,45]), while Levinson and colleagues cite conversational constraints upon turn-taking as plausible
universals [56]. Finally, some approaches to linguistics
suggest that essentially nothing in the FLB is specific
to language (see the collection in Tomasello [57]).
Such cognitive or functional approaches are often
favoured by psychologists or anthropologists, who
reject the notion that the toolkit of language acquisition and processing includes any tools specific to
language. Although proponents of such approaches
often strongly reject the term universal grammar (e.g.
[58]), cognitive universals spanning beyond language
are nonetheless part and parcel of the traditional
search for universal aspects of the human language
faculty and their biological bases.
As emphasized in the useful overview of Jackendoff
[50], such diversity of opinion is to be expected, and is
a healthy sign of science at work. When scientists reach
broad agreement about the nature of the FLB, the
constraints that our innate endowment places on
human languages and the manner in which this
endowment aids the child in language acquisition, we
will have solved some of the most fundamental problems in human biology. It would be naive to expect
such a holy grail to yield quickly or easily to scientific
research. To give some sense of the state of play,
I have listed a number of proposed features of universal grammar in table 2. These are not intended to be
either exhaustive or necessarily self-consistent, but
rather to provide a sense of the kinds of features and
issues that are currently being debated. Many of
these universals have at least one language that
appears to be an exception (cf. [13]), though many
exceptions are debated by other experts (cf. the commentaries on that article). It can hardly be doubted
that this debate will continue for many more years.
In summary, the search for linguistic universals has
proceeded from the eighteenth-century assumption of
a rather superficial list of features common to languages

Review. Language unity and diversity

Table 2. A sampling of linguistic proposals concerning
language universals.
Jakobson ([60], ch. 10)
all languages:
1 have syllables with initial consonants
2 have syllables with final vowels
3 distinguish nouns (existents) from verbs (occurrents)
4 distinguish subject from predicate
5 have indexical symbols like pronouns
6 distinguish singular from plural
Greenberg [12] (he lists 43, only a few are listed below)
1 in nominal sentences, subjects typically precede objects
2 languages with SOV order are typically postpositional
3 in conditional statements, the conditional clause always
precedes the conclusion
4 if a language has inflection, it always has derivation
5 if the noun agrees with the verb in gender, the adjective
also agrees with the noun
6 no language has a dual number unless it has a plural
7 no language has a trial number unless it has a dual
8 if a language has gender nouns, it has gender on
pronouns
Chomsky [41]
1 all languages make infinite use of finite means; the
creative aspect of language
2 all languages map proper names to objects meeting a
condition of spatio-temporal contiguity
3 syntactic rules apply to syntactic structures, rather than
linear sequences of phonemes or morphemes
Pinker & Bloom [20]
all languages:
1 have major lexical categories (noun, verb, adjective,
preposition)
2 have major phrasal categories (noun phrase, verb
phrase, etc.)
3 use phrase structure rules (e.g. X-bar theory or
immediate dominance rules)
4 distinguish subject from object, etc. using rules of linear
order or case affixes
5 have verb affixes or other means to signal aspect and
tense
6 possess auxiliaries
7 use anaphoric elements, including pronouns and
reflexives
8 have wh-movement
Jackendoff [50]
1 all languages use a parallel architecture with three
interacting tiers: phonology, syntax and semantics

(every language has words, every language has nouns

and verbs) to a far more abstract set of generalizations
and regularities about the human language faculty, and
the biological endowment that a human child uses to
acquire language [41,42]. These regularities will certainly incorporate more general aspects of cognition,
including aspects of perception, motor control or conceptual structure that predated language in human
evolutionary history. From this abstract perspective,
UG is not reducible to a list of properties universally
found in every language, nor does its existence imply
such a list. As Jackendoff [50] puts it, UG is a characterization of the toolkit the child uses in language
acquisition, not a list of universal features of adult
languages. Jackendoff emphasizes that not every
Phil. Trans. R. Soc. B (2011)

W. T. Fitch

381

mechanism provided by universal grammar appears

in every language since when you have a toolkit,
you are not obliged to use every tool for every job.
It is quite unfortunate, then, that many critics have
conflated UG and surface language universals, and
proffered the discovery of exceptions to some broad
regularity as a refutation of UG (e.g. [13,59]). As
Roman Jakobson, a tireless defender of the search for
universals, pointed out, a rule requiring amendment
is more useful than the absence of any rule [60,
p. 147]. The notion of UG is perfectly compatible
with a very broad range of linguistic diversity,
evolving via cultural processes, and indeed has developed over many decades with precisely this diversity
in mind.

(c) The diversity of human languages

Within the broadly defined and still incomplete set of
commonalities and regularities discussed above, the
diversity of existing human languages is quite astounding (cf. [13]). The closest non-human analogue to this
culturally transmitted diversity comes from the song
systems of some songbirds (e.g. mimic thrushes like
the brown thrasher [61,62]) or humpback whales
[63 65], but I know of no animal communication
system that comes close to matching the range of
diversity in the more than 6000 existing human
languages (ethnologue currently reports 6909: www.
ethnologue.com). Diversity itself is an important
aspect of the biology of language, clearly tied to the
learned, culturally transmitted aspects of human
language [28].
Within these broad constraints, virtually every
aspect of human language is variable. A fundamental
difference is modality, which varies between spoken
languages and over 100 signed languages, expressed
via manual and facial movements. Signed and spoken
languages are equivalent in their complexity and expressive power, despite using completely different input/
output mechanisms [6668]. Although many animal
communication systems contain both visual and
auditory components, there is no non-human system
in which one modality can be completely replaced by
another and yet convey identical messages [69].
In the domain of sound systems, all spoken languages
include consonants and vowels, but there is huge variation in the number of phonemes, from 11 to roughly
150 [13,70]. Among vowels, many of the worlds
languages have only three vowels, and the mean
number is five [71,72], making the English vowel
system rather rich with its 15 or so vowels (despite our
writing system making do with six). Consonants are
even more variable in number and type [73].
Nonetheless, the diversity of human vowel systems
is underlain by well-understood regularities. Vowel systems provide an excellent model system for
understanding the interactions between cultural transmission, communicative efficiency and universality.
Across many languages, the distribution of vowels
in formant space changes systematically as vowel
number increases. This pattern can be duplicated by
a simple mathematical model of energy-optimized
intelligibility [74]. Computer simulations that

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explicitly model glossogeny converge on a set of vowel

patterns quite similar to those observed in real
languages [75 77], suggesting that cultural transmission plays a central role, though always within
biologically imposed limits. These universal regularities in vowel systems can be understood as
resulting from an interaction between biologically
given aspects of human audition and vocal production
(the ear and vocal tract) with constraints of
communication, intelligibility and ease of production,
and optimized over many generations. Vowel systems
are thus one of several abstract universals that derive
from an interaction of biologically given and glossogenetic forces; they illustrate the futility of attempts to
assign such aspects of language to one or the other
of these categories.
Words and their internal morphological structure
are one of the most variable aspects of language. Morphemes are meaningful units of language; they
include free morphemes (words like dog or bark)
and bound morphemes that must be attached to
other morphemes, like the English -ed marking past
tense, or -s marking plurals. These morphemes can
be combined to form multi-morphemic words like
dogs or barked. So-called isolating languages
(e.g. Chinese) lack such morphological processes
almost entirely, while polysynthetic languages have
vast complex stores of bound morphemes serving
functions that, in English, are accomplished by
adjectives, adverbs or syntax [78]. Such languages
are widespread, including Ainu in Japan, Chukchi in
Siberia and Mohawk and many other Native American
languages [79]. In most of these languages, a single
word can express complex meanings that in English
or other European languages would require an entire
phrase or sentence.
Turning to syntax, while the word classes noun and
verb appear to be universal, some languages appear to
lack such familiar classes as adjectives and adverbs.
Further, there are important word classes in other
languages that seem unfamiliar to Europeans, such as
classifiers or coverbs (cf. [13,55,80]). Other
languages take the onomatopoeia expressed in English
words like meow or moo, or the sound symbolism
in words like glitter, gleam, glisten, glimmer (for
shimmering light) to a far more complex and productive
level. Such syntactically peculiar ideophone systems
[81,82] can include thousands of items (e.g. Japanese
doki doki for heart-pounding excitement).
At the level of semantics, languages obviously vary
considerably in words involving technology: such
nouns as keyboard or laptop are recent English
acquisitions, while older nouns like calash and
futchel (parts of horse-drawn carriages) have virtually
disappeared in 100 years. Beyond such superficial
variation in the lexicon, languages vary considerably
in their colour system or number system (although virtually all languages distinguish one, two and many,
and colours follow universal patterns [83,84]). For
spatial vocabulary, some languages use absolute references rather than locally defined spatial terms to
denote location: rather than saying the chair on your
right they would say the chair to your north [85].
Phil. Trans. R. Soc. B (2011)

Finally, at a pragmatic level, there can be huge variation within a single language in terms of the words,
syntax and even phonetics used by men and women,
or language used between social equals versus between
dominant and subordinate individuals. The common
distinction in European languages between informal
and formal you (e.g. tu/vous in French or du/Sie
in German) pales in comparison to the extensive
differentiation found in Japanese or many other
languages.
Although this brief overview gives only a taste of the
kind of variation seen among languages, it shows that
many universal features one might guess at, based
on their ubiquity in European languages, are not
shared by many other languages in the world. This
fact led many of the early American linguists engaged
in documenting Native American languages to believe
in essentially unconstrained variation. Nonetheless, for
all of the examples above, linguists have uncovered
regularities revealing constraints on the form of
possible human languages. We now turn to the
mechanisms underlying these regularities.

3. A BIOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVE ON LANGUAGE

DIVERSITY
A tension between diversity and universality is a longrunning theme in biology. For example, a distinction is
often made in systematics between lumpers who,
recognizing the fundamental affinities of a clade,
combine them in one group, and splitters who,
emphasizing the differences, split them into multiple
groups. A similar distinction can be made among
students of language. Nothing of deep significance
rests on this distinction, because a fundamental
contribution of Darwins notion of descent with
modification is that evolution generates groups of
organisms related in a tree-like fashion. It is essentially
a matter of taste whether one emphasizes the twigs or
the main branches; both are important and both need
to be recognized and studied. These observations are
as true of glossogeny, the cultural evolution process
that generates languages, as for biological evolution,
and indeed many of the same tools can thus be
fruitfully used to analyse them [25,86,87].
An analogy to the diversity and unity of languages
is provided by features of our own vast phylum, the
vertebrates. Universal vertebrate features are encompassed in the notion of a Bauplan: a body plan that
includes (or included during development) a notochord running down the spine, and bony vertebrae
built around it. To this are attached ribs and generally
appendages. A mouth at the front of the animal serves
for both food and respiration, and is followed by branchial arches forming jaws, gills or other diverse
structures. Many other shared traits also characterize
most vertebrates, but these few suffice to make the
point: each of these traits is absent or modified in
one or a few species, but this does not render the
notion of the body plan vacuous. So, for example,
snakes have lost their limbs and sharks and rays have
lost their bony skeleton [88]. In much the same
way, we expect the basic body plan of language to

Review. Language unity and diversity

have certain characteristics that are common or even
ubiquitous, but should not be surprised to find
exceptions to some or even all of the standard characteristics. Thus, when scholars cite unusual languages
as a refutation of the entire concept of UG (e.g.
[13,59]), they both overlook the nature of biological
systems, which typically allow exceptions, and ignore
many explicit hypotheses about UG that have been
offered over the years.

(a) General versus specialized mechanisms as

a false dichotomy
Much of the current debate within linguistics concerning universals centres not on whether some
regularities, suitably abstract or statistical, exist. All
commentators agree the answer is yes, perhaps with
occasional exceptions. The arguments concern
whether these result from cultural or biological factors,
and if biological whether the underlying mechanisms
are specific to language or result from some more general cognitive constraints (e.g. the vocal or auditory
apparatus, pragmatics, functional constraints on communication, or limitations of short-term memory).
Given the fact that human cultural capacities themselves rest upon a unique biological basis, the debate
actually hinges on a distinction between general cognitive and specifically linguistic neural mechanisms
in our species.
I suggest that from a biological viewpoint this distinction is unproductive and misleading, and that the
debates surrounding it have led cognitive science
down a blind alley. Whether we consider neural mechanisms underlying language, the genetic mechanisms
that allow them to develop reliably in our species or
the evolutionary factors that led to these factors, the
language-specific versus general cognitive distinction becomes vague and unhelpful. This is not, of
course, because the study of such neural and genetic
mechanisms, or the developmental, cultural and evolutionary processes that generate them, is vague or
meaninglessquite the contrary. Rather, it is because
the interwoven causal forces that underlie these mechanisms and processes do not admit of simple
explanations, where each outcome is associated with
a single reified cause or function. Development
involves cycles of causation, where variables that are
initially effects later act back upon their previous
causes. Development involves a cascade of such cyclically causal complexes, allowing initially simple
systems to differentiate and increase in complexity.
This epigenetic perspective allows resolution of many
otherwise paradoxical observations, but demands
that we relinquish simple linear notions of causality
implicit in traditional preformationist and/or instructivist models [89]. Adult mechanisms will not be
explained in terms of simple, singular original
causes, whether functional, developmental or
evolutionary.
To illustrate, consider a few well-defined mechanisms involved in spoken language. First, the capacity
for vocal imitation, unique to humans among primates, appears to rest on the existence of direct
connections between lateral motor cortex and the
Phil. Trans. R. Soc. B (2011)

W. T. Fitch

383

motor neurons serving the larynx, tongue and respiratory muscles (reviewed in [90]). Such connections
exist in humans and not other primates [91], but comparable connections also exist in vocally imitating birds
[92,93]. The capacity for vocal imitation, and thus this
neural mechanism, is a central requirement for culturally shared spoken language. Can we thus say that
this mechanism evolved for spoken language? Not
necessarilyincreased vocal control and imitation of
vocalization also plays a central and necessary role in
human song [94]. While some scholars have argued
that song, or music in general, is non-adaptive, unselected by-products of language (e.g. [95]), others
since Darwin have suggested that music evolved
before, and paved the way for, spoken language
[1,96]. Thus, the question of whether direct vocalmotor connections are specifically for language or
not hinges on a debate about original function that is
very difficult to resolve empirically, rather than any
facts about the current function or mechanistic basis
of human vocal control. In any case, the mechanism
is both shared with song, and with other species, and
is squarely part of FLB.
A genetic example is provided by the FOXP2 gene,
which plays a key role in the control of complex,
sequential oral and facial movements in human
speech [97]. The gene itself represents an ancient transcription factor, widely shared among vertebrates, and
the human version contains two amino acid differences
that are shared by virtually all humans and not present
in chimpanzees or other primates [98]. Mutations in
the gene in human clinical cases lead to severe vocal
motor apraxia and speech deficits [99]. Is the human
allele of FOXP2 for language? Proponents would
cite the specificity of the mutated genes effects in
humans: it specifically and severely affects speech,
and not singing, or other more general aspects of
cognition [100]. Sceptics would point out that
FOXP2 is also expressed in the lungs and other
tissues, that it also affects non-speech control of the
mouth (especially complex sequences of movements)
and that speech is not language. While FOXP2 is
expressed in traditional cerebral language areas, it is
also expressed in cerebellum and basal ganglia [101].
Finally, FOXP2 plays a role in bird song learning
[102,103], again placing it squarely in the FLB. Nonetheless, it seems likely that the selective sweep that
drove the new, human allele of FOXP2 to fixation in
the hominid population leading to modern humans
had something to do with its role in human spoken
language (cf. [104]). But again, this specific genetic
mechanism defies simplistic attempts at functional categorization as general versus specialized. A similar
point might be made about recent suggestions that
intraspecific variation in genes associated with brain
development might subtly affect the propensity of a
population, over many generations, to adopt a tonal
language [105]. If true, this link need not imply that
these genes are for language in any meaningful sense.
As a final example, consider Brocas areaa
region of dorsolateral prefrontal cortex whose destruction in adult humans typically causes severe aphasia.
Although Broca originally considered this brain area
to be specific to speech production, research on

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Review. Language unity and diversity

aphasics in the 1970s suggested that the region also

plays a central role in syntax perception (e.g. [106]), a
conclusion that has been verified and extended by
modern brain imaging research (e.g. [107]). Nonetheless, brain imaging work using different protocols has
provided ample evidence that parts of this region
play a role in non-linguistic cognitive processes, loosely
captured by the notion of switching and cognitive
control [108], while its right-hemisphere homologue
appears to play a role in music perception [109,110].
Furthermore, it is clear that both the cognitive and linguistic functions normally subserved by Brocas area
can be accomplished by other brain regions in cases
of early brain damage [111]. That Brocas area is
involved in general cognition, in addition to its linguistic functions, suggests that its linguistic specializations
are a subset of more general, and presumably primitive,
cognitive functions. Again, however, it is difficult to
determine whether the non-linguistic functions of this
region (cognitive switching or music) are non-adaptive
by-products of some originally linguistic function, or
whether the linguistic functions are specializations of
some more general capacity. Furthermore, it is unclear
why resolving this point should be a central concern of
those interested in understanding the computations
performed by this region of cortex, the core concern
of neurolinguistics (cf. [112]).
What all of these examples make clear is that the
distinction between general and linguistically specialized mechanisms is hard to draw, even in those cases
where the mechanisms themselves seem fairly clearly
defined. Most areas of language are not, and will not
soon be, so clearly defined, and thus the distinction
itself is of little use in furthering our understanding
of the mechanisms. The same is true, more so, for
debates about the original function of these
mechanisms (cf. [4]). Thus, the long-running arguments surrounding such distinctions seem likely to
continue generating much heat and little light, and
to obscure the more basic empirical issues of what
the basic mechanisms underlying language are, how
they function at physiological and computational
levels and whether or not they are shared with other
species. Neither the original meaning of the term universal grammar, nor Chomskys later re-deployment of
the term in its modern UG guise, depends on the
degree of linguistic specialization of the universal
constraints that act on the development of human
language. Even the question of human specificity is
irrelevant to whether a given cognitive mechanism
plays a universal role in structuring human language:
indeed the more ancient and widely shared constraints
(e.g. limited short-term memory) are the most likely to
play a central and universal role in structuring
languages. Core mechanisms underlying language
can be innate and universal among humans without
being either unique to language, or our species.

4. SYNTHESIS: A FORMAL PERSPECTIVE ON

UNITY AND DIVERSITY
The preceding review indicates both that abstract
regularities concerning every aspect of language
Phil. Trans. R. Soc. B (2011)

exist, and that the diversity of languages within

these broad constraints is considerable, dwarfing
that found in other animal communication systems.
These facts demand a perspective on the biological
nature of language that encompasses both unity
and diversity. I have already suggested that the
notion of a body plan provides one analogy for
this kind of diversity within unity, and recent progress in evolutionary developmental biology offers
clear examples where traditional notions of Bauplane
can be cashed out in terms of HOX genes specifying
axial segmentation and specification [113,114]. Similarly, the diversity and unity of the tetrapod hand
[115] can be understood in terms of the shared transcription factors regulating limb growth [116,117].
Many more examples of this kind are sure to
follow, and enlightening genetic and developmental
data are accumulating rapidly. Bauplane, and the
general constraints they imply, are real, and can be
understood mechanistically in terms of developmental processes. The parallel with UG and particular
languages seems unmistakable, and has informed linguistics thinking since the birth of generative
linguistics [41,42]. Thus, it is perhaps not premature
to seek a more general theoretical framework within
which diversity and unity, in both biologically and
culturally evolving systems, can be fruitfully
integrated.
I suggest that the general notion of abstract
constraints, operating ubiquitously during the development of a system in time and space, provides
one such framework (figure 1). Such systems are
familiar: a rich body of mathematics exploring such
constraints is the theory of differential equations.
A differential equation is simply one that expresses
the relationship between a variable and one or
more of its derivatives as they change in time, and
sometimes space. Indeed, they would be more transparently termed derivative-based equations [118].
Differential equations exist in many forms, but in
general they are among the fundamental mathematical tools used by physicists: Newtons Laws,
Maxwells Laws, the wave equation and a vast array
of other equations central to all branches of physics
and biology are expressed as differential equations.
A differential equation like x 00 ax expresses a constraint on the movement of an object: its
acceleration x 00 must be proportional to its location
x. In general, there are an infinite number of specific
paths that could satisfy this constraint. If we denote a
particular path or form of movement as a function
f(x), we can ask whether or not this function satisfies
the constraint(s) embodied in the original equation.
If so, it is termed a particular solution. Because
there are an infinite number of solutions, we can
think of this differential equation as defining a vast
family of solutions, some of which may be
superficially very different, but all of which have in
common that they satisfy the constraint defined by
the original equation. In some cases, we can discover
a broader general solution (e.g. periodic oscillation)
that encompasses an entire set of specific, particular
functions (box 1).

Review. Language unity and diversity

W. T. Fitch

385

Box 1. General and specific solutions for an ordinary differential equation.

(a)
(b)

y'(t) = ry(t)(My(t))
(c)

12

14

10

12

10

8
6

2
0
0

10

Figure 1. (a) An ordinary differential equation. (b) Arrows indicate constraints on the general solution (with one specific
solution shown). (c) Multiple specific solutions to the same equation.

Figure 1a gives the differential equation y 0 ry(M 2 y), where y is a function of time, and y 0 denotes the first derivative with respect to time. This is an example of a logistic equation, often used in modelling growth. It is simple, but
approximates in a general way many developmental or ecological growth processes. Figure 1b illustrates the constraints
on a general solution to this equation by the arrows, which indicate what the slope (y 0 ) of the function must be at each
point. Parameters determining a particular solution include initial conditions and boundary conditions. One particular
solution is shown as the black S-curve in figure 1b, with the initial condition y 0.
Figure 1c illustrates a selection of particular solutions, from the infinite set of such solutions, each starting with a
different initial y, but fulfiling the same overall constraints. While a splitter might look at figure 1c and see a group of
categorically different functions (e.g. descending versus increasing), the lumper would search for commonalities, and
in this case, would find them in the general solution to the underlying differential equation (figure 1b).
Although such a first-order model is obviously trivially simple compared with any actual biological system, it provides
a well-understood mathematical metaphor for the kind of formal framework required to conceptually integrate a diversity
of surface structure with unity of the underlying process.

The parallel with language is clear: particular

languages correspond to specific solutions to the constraints imposed by human biology on language
acquisition and historical change. Initially, a central
task for studies of language diversity will be to find
statistical abstractions that encompass the range of linguistic variability (cf. [13,119]). The search for
universals is akin to the search for a general solution
that encompasses all of these particular solutions,
and the goal of biolinguistics is to understand, and
make explicit, the specific biological constraints that
underlie this general solution. Of course, we expect
many such constraints to interact with each other
over developmental, historical and evolutionary time
[120]. Chomsky has recently suggested that historical
factors, like the Norman Conquest for English, probably play a central role in generating such diversity
[42]. These interacting systems entail dauntingly complex systems of partial differential equations involving
genes and the epigenetic control of their expression,
brains and their self-wiring depending on the organism
and its environment, and individuals as part of cultural
systems.
Although at present I offer this parallel as a metaphor, it will become more than that as these systems
become better understood. There can be little doubt
that the mathematics of biological and cultural
change will rely heavily on differential equations.
Phil. Trans. R. Soc. B (2011)

Unfortunately, when it comes to the systems of nonlinear partial differential equations that typify real
biological systems, there is no guaranteed way to find
general solutions. In complex, real-world examples,
nature provides a few examples of particular solutions,
and the hard work is to find the constraints underlying
such solutions and, perhaps, to discern general solutions. Systems of interacting nonlinear equations
exhibit sensitive dependence on initial conditions,
bifurcations and chaos. Understanding the attractors
that constitute general solutions in such systems represents a daunting frontier for theoretical biology
[121,122]. Both top-down approaches (invoking cultural and historical factors) and bottom-up or
reductionist approaches (e.g. gene or brain-focused
research) will be important for a full characterization
of this complex system [123]. No one expects such a
task to be easy. Equally, no one can deny the
fundamental significance of the search.
To conclude, I have suggested that progress in
understanding the biological constraints underlying
human language must, of course, attend to the vast
diversity of human languages, which provide crucial
insights into the range of particular solutions to the problems language poses. But such progress also requires a
search for universals, in the abstract sense of crosslinguistic generalizations that has always been understood in modern linguistics [12,41,50,60]. This is

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Review. Language unity and diversity

equivalent to seeking the general solution encompassing

these particular solutions. This search, even when
incomplete, will provide essential fodder in the search
for the underlying biological constraints. Rejections of
the search for universals, based on a few exceptions to
some otherwise universal rule, miss the point of this
endeavour. Arguments about whether the constraints
are general to cognition, or specific to language or to
humans, are in my opinion unlikely to help resolve
the substantive biological issues involved in understanding the FLB. Nor will an attempt to divorce cultural
processes from linguistic or biological processes help:
the very capacity for culture has a strong biological
basis in our species, and human cultural evolution is
intimately bound up with language itself. While drawing distinctions between such categories may prove
heuristically useful in some cases, treating them as
dichotomies will simply impede progress. Future progress will require integrated discussions of language
diversity and the underlying unity of the instinct to
learn language. As the neural and genetic data continue
to flow in, we will increasingly need conceptual frameworks encompassing both diversity and unity, rather
than dichotomies that polarize them.
I thank William D. W. Fitch, Daniel Everett, Stephen
Levinson, the editors and three anonymous reviewers for
comments on an earlier version. Writing was supported by
ERC Advanced Grant SOMACCA to the author.

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