32
“If a language has X, then it also has Y”) [ 102 ]. Although the existence of implica-
tional universals has been known to linguists for several decades (see [ 103 ] for a
fi rst elucidation of the concept), systematic comparison of hundreds of languages
from around the world has necessitated “ a rethinking of the nature of Universal
Grammar, which is usually thought of as a set of unrestricted universals ” ([ 102 ],
p. 13). Croft explains this point further:
The part of Universal Grammar that consists of unrestricted universals specifying ways in
which all languages are identical captures only a very small portion of what is universal
about language. It misses most of what is universal about language beyond the basic design
features.^1 The presence of large numbers of implicational universals requires a model which
allows for a great deal of variation in grammatical structure across languages, but constrains
that variation to a signifi cant degree in many different dimensions... The second general
conclusion about language universals that is revealed by typological research is that the
constraints on language variation that are represented by implicational universals are not
exceptionless^2 in the way that the design features of language are. (p. 13–14)
Universal patterns have also been proposed for the semantic domains of colour ,
landscape and body-part terminology, but only a few have survived careful scrutiny
in any way [ 104 , 105 ]. In their fi rst major publication on colour terminology in the
world’s languages, Berlin and Kay [ 106 ] made strong claims regarding the exis-
tence of universal patterns in the cross-linguistic naming of colour terms. Some later
authors, such as Dedrick [ 107 ], have rephrased these universals as ‘strong tenden-
cies’ (p. 106), while Lucy ([ 108 ], p. 323) has objected to the near-exclusive use of
Munsell arrays in the colour naming tasks. This, he points out, ignores critically
relevant information, such as the normal everyday referential uses of the colour
terms and the grammatical status of these terms in a language. Using very different
methodology, Wierzbicka [ 109 ] argued that the (English) concept of ‘colour’ has no
place in the semantics of the Australian language Burarra; the two ‘colour’ words
described in this language refer to more global visual categories, for which bril-
liance is at least as importance as hue. The issue of colour universals continues to be
debated (e.g. [ 110 ]), although a middle-ground consensus seems to be emerging
[ 111 , 112 ], which recognises both universal constraints (albeit weaker), as well as
an effect of language on colour categories.
2.2 Universals in Folk Biological Classifi cation
Given this context , it is surprising that the existence of universals in another well-
studied domain—the folk classifi cation of plants and animals—is, to an extent,
taken for granted by most ethnobiologists, with the exception of a dissenting
(^1) These are very basic features that include: utterances made up of discrete meaningful units; con-
ventions of syntax; and duality of patterning (independence of sound structure from syntactic
structure) [ 102 ].
(^2) An example of an implicational universal presented in Croft [ 102 ] is the following: If a language
has Adjective–Noun word order, then it (almost always) has Numeral–Noun word order. Note that
a violation of this ‘universal’ is possible, and even attested, in a small number of languages.
2 Ethnotaxonomies and Universals: Investigating some Key Assumptions