It is the basic tenet of the functional approach to typology that at least some linguistic universals may be explained by appealing to features of language use. But the mechanics of the mapping between function and distribution are seldom made explicit. In this paper, a theory of linguistic adaptation is set out in which universals are treated as phenomena of the third kind in Keller’s (1994) t...

Abstract English (an SVO language) and Korean SOV are polar opposites in terms of grammatical order. Studies show that rhetorical devices (RDs) effective generating collective audience responses British political oratory. This article attempts to study the functions RDs oratory importance speech delivery. Through analysis speaker-audience turn-taking systems, it is suggested do not function as ...

According to a well-known argument against dispositional essentialism, the nature of unmanifested token powers leaves essentialists with an objectionable commitment reality non-existent entities. The idea is that, because are directed at their manifestations, they require those manifestations. Arguably most promising response this works by claiming if properties universals, directedness need on...

Human languages are diverse and so precise statements of common properties must abstract away from specifics of particular languages. We note several abstract and absolute ‘Type 1’ universals and present some new ones built on a notion of ‘structural invariant’ that applies equally to constituent structure and individual grammatical morphemes. Crucially, these universals may be realized in stru...

Awe has been theorized as a collective emotion, one that enables individuals to integrate into social collectives. In keeping with this theorizing, we propose that awe diminishes the sense of self and shifts attention away from individual interests and concerns. In testing this hypothesis across 6 studies (N = 2137), we first validate pictorial and verbal measures of the small self; we then doc...

This essay in the "anthropology of science" is about how cognition constrains culture in producing science. The example is folk biology, whose cultural recurrence issues from the very same domain-specific cognitive universals that provide the historical backbone of systematic biology. Humans everywhere think about plants and animals in highly structured ways. People have similar folk-biological...