Verbal Morphology and the Evolution of Language

The world’s languages show great variety and there has been a loss of faith in the idea that they all have the basic structure. Our suggestion here is that they are indeed rather different in structure, but that the end result in terms of meaning is essentially parallel across the world's languages. In other words, there is no Universal Grammar but there is a fundamental psychic unity among human beings, the result of millions of years of evolution. We compare and contrast five languages to demonstrate this main point, focusing on verbal morphology, the contribution of tense in particular. We treat language as a fully symbolic sign system, with phonology, syntax, and semantics. Therefore, we have no need to make reference to movement operations. Similarly, we have no need for functional categories such as tense or agreement phrases. As we have no such movement operations, we do not claim that differences in structure can be made to disappear. These languages are fundamentally different in structure, but they are all working towards the same final goal, the expression of meaning, in an attempt to invoke a mental simulation by the listener.