Language Universals and Grammatical Category of Number in Language and Communicative Education

Abstract

The text deals with explanation of language universals issue, as it is presented in some of the foreign scientific general-linguistic texts. Language universals as a topic are usually missed out during primary and secondary education, because they are considered to be too abstract.

We think that working with language universals could be interesting for the pupils and at the same time it can develop communicative competence and understanding the language system of Czech and also foreign languages. As an example of work with linguistic universals we present uncommon features of grammatical category of number, which is usually put among universals.

Keywords

• language universals
• typology of languages
• transformative grammar
• grammatical category
• number
• singular
• plural