Semantics circle: Universal Paradigmatic Gaps

Abstract

Universal paradigmatic gaps are gaps in linguistic paradigms that appear across languages and across users of a given language. As of yet, only very few gaps of this kind have been discussed in the literature. The one gap that has received substantial discussion concerns the universal absence of a lexicalized negated form for the quantifiers all, every or always: There appears to be no language in the world that exhibits a single word (or lexical item) that means ‘not all’, ‘not every’ or ‘not always’, an observation dating back to Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274). 

It is deeply enigmatic that such words do not exist across languages and cultures. Clearly, any theory seeking to explain such missing lexicalizations, i.e. any theory of universal paradigmatic gaps, should be able to make clear predictions about what may or may not be lexicalized, and why that is the case. Such a theory has thus far not been developed. It is also without question that such a theory should have a broad empirical foundation. To date, the pool of data has been heavily slanted toward well-studied, Western, Indo-European, adult spoken language, and negative quantifiers therein. 

Understanding the nature, distribution and behaviour of universal paradigmatic gaps will have several profound implications for our understanding of human cognition, language and communication. Why is it that we cannot always say what is thinkable? 

In this talk, I present an outline of a research program (as part of my ERC advanced grant Universal paradigmatic gaps) that aims at addressing these questions focussing at the nall problem and some other cases.