LINGUISTIC UNIVERSALS AS THE FOUNDATION OF COMPARATIVE RESEARCH

Abstract

The article is devoted to linguistic universals as one of the most important term of typology and the foundation of comparative research. Purpose. The analysis is aimed at tracing the history of the emergence and formation of the term linguistic universals, as well as analyzing the available definitions and classifications of universals on the basis of the synthesis of the views of famous linguists and the authors’ own observations, and determining the place of verbal constructions with an aspectual meaning in the system of linguistic universals. The relevance of the research is due to the constant interest of scientists in particular languages as a product of universal thinking, as well as the discovery of new universals and the need for their description and systematization. The research material is the texts of translations of Ossetian folk tales into Russian, English and Turkish. Materials and methods. The methodological basis of the study is theoretical analysis of literary sources, comparison, generalization, systematization оf empirical data. Results. The article concludes that there is no unambiguous interpretation of linguistic universals and, consequently, there are different approaches to the definition of the term universals depending on the volume of linguistic phenomena covered by this term. Discrepancies in the set of tools for implementing universal aspectual meanings of the compared languages can be explained by the peculiarities of the structural and typological organization of each specific language. Practical implications. The results of the analysis can be used in routine didactic processes, contributing to the improvement of the methodology of teaching a practical course of languages, a course of theoretical grammar, translation theory.

Keywords

• linguistic universals
• comparative linguistics
• verbal constructions
• aspectuality