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mawes12

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Does every language have the same grammar?
 

tedmc

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No, the other languages which I use, Chinese and Malay for example, do not have tenses and subject-verb agreement like English.
But this is not a question on English language.
 

mawes12

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Do they have verb, noun, adverb, preposition, conjunction, and adjective? It's kinda strange how we are all humans but we have different languages.
 

emsr2d2

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It's not strange at all. Languages develop differently and independent of one another. Just because one language uses articles (for example), there's no reason to think that all others should. You seem to be suggesting that "Human" should be a language. If that were the case, we would presumably all use the same words, not just the same grammar.
 

mawes12

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No, I'm saying we might have came from one parent and we started to use different languages after spreading, in my mind.
 

emsr2d2

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That still doesn't mean that every one of those languages, with their thousands of years of evolution, would end up with the same grammar.
 

mawes12

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Does every language have verb, noun, adverb, preposition, conjunction, and adjective?
 

mawes12

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That still doesn't mean that every one of those languages, with their thousands of years of evolution, would end up with the same grammar.

It looks like some people don't like simple things.
 

emsr2d2

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Esredux

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Does every language have the same grammar?
It doesn't seem to make any sense if they did. The basic idea of this universe is that anything with a specific name differs from all the rest, no matter how huge or subtle the difference might be. Why do you ask?
 

mawes12

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It doesn't seem to make any sense if they did. The basic idea of this universe is that anything with a specific name differs from all the rest, no matter how huge or subtle the difference might be. Why do you ask?

To me, there are so many words for one thing. Not to be rude but you don't know what the universe really wants because you didn't create it and you aren't the only one living in it, I believe. I Hope I didn't sound disrespectful.
 
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MikeNewYork

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And you don't know what the universe wants either. That is assuming that the universe is capable of wanting.
 

mawes12

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And you don't know what the universe wants either. That is assuming that the universe is capable of wanting.

Never said I did. You are right when you said this universe is capabale of wanting because everybody wants something like someone wants something that others don't want and others don't want what others want.
 
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Esredux

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To me, there are so many words for one thing. Not to be rude but you don't know what the universe really wants because you didn't create it and you aren't the only one living in it, I believe. I Hope I didn't sound disrespectful.
And to me, the number of words is of no relevance provided the words are in some sort of order, either in a language or in one's head.
Whoever or whatever you consider the reason for this world, it's very human to look around and notice things. A curious mind will go even further trying to look into the nature of things, and that should call for some sort of classification or, at the very least, naming things. You just need to hang out for a while to get the big picture.
Finally, yes, hope dies last. ;-)
 

mawes12

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Thanks for trying to understand, Esgaleth and everyone who replied. To me, in life, there is only everything/everybody's thoughts and emotions, nature, and the one who created the universe, which is god.
 
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Tdol

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No, I'm saying we might have came from one parent and we started to use different languages after spreading, in my mind.

There are large language families, but no one has managed to synthesise a single origin for all of them, so it probably arose in different places. Some linguists talk about a Universal Grammar which exists in our heads, which is then adapted to fit the rules of the language(s) a child is learning. It doesn't mean that all languages share the same top-level grammar, but suggests that if you go deep enough you can find the options that allow us to learn individual grammars.
 

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Since you mentioned God, I'm assuming your question stems from the Bible and the story of the tower of Babel. Interestingly enough, the are similar stories in other religions so the myth isn't unique just to Judeo-Christian religions. (Brahma does something similar in Hindu lore.)

There is a field of linguistics referred to as historical linguistics, and as Tdol mentioned, there are those who are trying to prove the existence of a universal language, or monogenesis.

To learn more about the concept of Universal Grammar, do some research into the work and writings of Noam Chomsky. He's generally credited with the concept.


It is generally accepted that most Indo-European languages have derived from a larger initial language referred to As Proto-Indo-European, although there are some languages, referred to as language isolates, that can't be connected to PIE.

There is speculation on a Proto-Word, language, but that's just speculation and not widely accepted, as is PIE.
 

MikeNewYork

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I am not a fan of Chomsky.
 
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