Anyone who has tried to learn a new language knows how difficult it can be to learn a different grammar. Wouldn鈥檛 it be great if there were rules of grammar that applied to all languages?
Perhaps there are. of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology has proposed a universal rule linking intonation with where we place question-words like 鈥渨hat鈥� and 鈥渨ho鈥� in a sentence. This is the first time anyone has found a link between intonation and word order in questions, and it could also help explain how babies learn to speak.
In some languages, a statement can be turned into a question by, for example, replacing the object of the sentence with a question-word and changing the intonation. In other languages, including English, the question-word also moves relative to the word it replaces: 鈥淗eather is buying a book鈥� becomes 鈥淲hat is Heather buying?鈥�.
Advertisement
In his new book Uttering Trees, Richards claims that by studying the complex patterns affecting intonation in different languages, he can predict whether the question-word will move and where it will go. He says he has checked this for 20 languages, such as Japanese and Basque, where the rules of intonation are precise enough for the idea to be tested.
Intonation can be mapped as patterns of pitch that are separated by breaks. Richards found that whether the question-word moves relative to the word it replaces depends on whether these breaks tend to come at the beginning of phrases or at the end.
鈥淚t鈥檚 a really neat idea,鈥� says , at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. Cable is reasonably convinced that the rule applies to all the languages Richards has tested, although he says that it鈥檚 a thornier issue whether it will apply to the rest of the world鈥檚 languages.
鈥淚f correct, it is a very important discovery,鈥� says at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles. Such a connection between syntax and intonation would help to explain how babies unravel word order from the continuous streams of sound that they hear, with changes in intonation acting as cues to grammar, she says.
鈥淚t could explain how babies unravel word order from the continuous stream of sounds that they hear鈥�
