In view of the critique of the methodology of the dominant interdisciplinary research involving language studies as the main component, in particular clinical linguistics, Cummings (Pragmatic disorders. Perspectives in pragmatics, philosophy and psychology, vol 3. Springer, Dordrecht, 2014) proposes that "It is perhaps appropriate at this point to move the debate onto non-empirical grounds." In Cummings (2014: 113) she starts such a debate on the grounds of the philosophy of language and pragmatics. In this article, I propose to expand that debate by including the input of the philosophy of science. I start the discussion by presenting the way one may carry out language research in the paradigm of empirical sciences from the perspective outlined in Bunge (Scientific research. Strategy and philosophy. Berlin, Springer, 1967; Method, model and matter (synthese library). D. Reidel Publishing Company, Dordrecht, 1973; Emergence and convergence: qualitative novelty and the unity of knowledge. University of Toronto Press, Toronto, 2003) and constrained by Altmann's (Towards a theory of language. Glottometrica 1:1-25, 1978) assumption about self-originating and self-regulatory nature of language. Keywords Empirical paradigm Mario Bunge Procedural model of language Models The order of adjectives Self-organization pmc-status-qastatus 0 pmc-status-live yes pmc-status-embargo no pmc-status-released yes pmc-prop-open-access yes pmc-prop-olf no pmc-prop-manuscript no pmc-prop-legally-suppressed no pmc-prop-has-pdf yes pmc-prop-has-supplement no pmc-prop-pdf-only no pmc-prop-suppress-copyright no pmc-prop-is-real-version no pmc-prop-is-scanned-article no pmc-prop-preprint no pmc-prop-in-epmc yes pmc-license-ref CC BY issue-copyright-statement © The Author(s) 2016 Background As it is becoming more and more common to study bio-cognitive-social aspects of language, more and more researchers attempt to study language the way it is done in core empirical sciences. To show how qualitative linguistic laws (principles) can account for phenomenological laws (patterns) in linguistics in analogy to the way it is done in empirical sciences, I shall present an account of a statistical preference in the order of certain categories of adjectives in Adjective, Adjective, Noun (AAN) phrases with the help of the procedural model of language presented in Zielinska ( 2007a , b , c , 2010 , 2013 , 2014 ). (nationality, material) has also been observed, for instance, in German, Vietnamese, Chinese, Hungarian, Polish, and, with some reservations in French, which suggests a universal cause for the phenomenon. A more modern approach to this issue is to analyse the dependence of the distance of a given adjective from the associated noun on some concept, which characterizes a given semantic category and which can be quantified. Next, one will search for the mechanism that would account for the dependence observed. Two of such measurable factors influencing the distance between a given adjective and the associated noun turn out to be gradability and categoriability. The first reason is that placing a categorizing adjective first, i.e. further from the noun (thus, interpreting it last), and placing a gradable one second, i.e., closer to the noun (thus, interpreting it first), The hypothesis that the order of adjectives, starting from the noun, (which reflects the order of their operation), goes: categorizing first and gradable second) implies the following. If we divide two semantic categories of adjectives, which typically follow each other (let us call these A and B), into a “more gradabe” and “less gradable” subcategories each—A m-grad and A less-gradable , B m-grad and B less-grad —then the statistical dominance of the occurrence of the order A m-grad B less-grad N over B less-grad A m-grad N in AAN phrases should be even stronger than the statistical dominance of the order of total categories ABN over BAN, which, in turn, should be stronger than the dominance of the order of A les-grad B m-grad N over that in B less-grad A m-grad N categories. Yet, such ordering is not a grammatical rule for Polish, but a preference.) Finally, note, that it follows from what has been said above that the categories which are neither often used gradably nor categorizingly will be placed in the middle between the two groups. And if an adjective is neither truly gradable, nor categorizing, in other words, it is not used selectively, it is used encodingly. So it means that the categories of “age” and “colour” are typically used encodingly, i.e., with a relatively stable meaning. This corroborates our intuition. Interestingly, language users are not aware of statistical correlation in language. A similar situation took place in Polish academic world. Despite the fact that, due to being non-native speakers of English, Poles are quite familiar with Bolinger’s research concerning English language presented in ESL books, the possibility of researching the ordering of adjectives in Polish noun phrases was not entertained until proven by Zielińska ( 2007a , b , c ). She showed a statistical preference in the order of three categories of Polish adjectives representing the categories 1 “highly gradable adjectives”, 2. “neither highly gradable, nor highly categorizing”, 3. They are observed in every language in the world and at all times. Moreover, it can be shown that these properties of linguistic elements and their inter-relations abide by universal laws, which can be formulated in a strict mathematical way—in analogy to the laws of the well-known natural sciences. Emphasis has to be put on the fact that these laws are stochastic; they do not capture single cases (this would neither be expected nor possible), they rather predict the probabilities of certain events or certain conditions in a whole. It is easy to find counter-examples to any of the examples cited above. However, this does not mean that they contradict the corresponding laws.

Human languages show astonishing variety, yet their diversity is constrained by recurring patterns. Linguists have long argued over the extent and causes of these grammatical 'universals'. Using Grambank-a comprehensive database of grammatical features across the world's languages-we tested 191 proposed universals with Bayesian analyses that account for both genealogical descent and geographical proximity. We find statistical support for about a third of the proposed linguistic universals. The majority of these concern word order and hierarchical universals: two types that have featured prominently in earlier work. Evolutionary analyses show that languages tend to change in ways that converge on these preferred patterns. This suggests that, despite the vast design space of possible grammars, languages do not evolve entirely at random. Shared cognitive and communicative pressures repeatedly push languages towards similar solutions.

of syntactic rules that is universal for all humans and which underlies the grammars of all human languages. This set of rules is called Universal Grammar; Language is a structured system of communication that consists of grammar and vocabulary. It is the primary means by which humans convey meaning, both in spoken and signed forms, and may also be conveyed through writing. Human language is characterized by its cultural and historical diversity, with significant variations observed between cultures and across time. Human languages possess the proper In the 1960s, Noam Chomsky formulated the generative theory of language. According to this theory, the most basic form of language is a set of syntactic rules that is universal for all humans and which underlies the grammars of all human languages. This set of rules is called Universal Grammar; for Chomsky, describing it is the primary objective of the discipline of linguistics. Thus, he considered that the grammars of individual languages are only of importance to linguistics insofar as they allow us to deduce the universal underlying rules from which the observable linguistic variability is generated. In opposition to the formal theories of the generative school, functional theories of language propose that since language is fundamentally a tool, its structures are best analyzed… Depending on philosophical perspectives regarding the definition of language and meaning, when used as a general concept, "language" may refer to the cognitive ability to learn and use systems of complex communication, or to describe the set of rules that makes up these systems, or the set of utterances that can be produced from those rules. All languages rely on the process of semiosis to relate signs to particular meanings. Oral, manual and tactile languages contain a phonological system that governs how symbols are used to form sequences known as words or morphemes, and a syntactic system that governs how words and morphemes are combined to form phrases and utterances. This view, which can be traced back to the philosophers Kant and Descartes, understands language to be largely innate, for example, in Chomsky's theory of universal grammar, or American philosopher Jerry Fodor's extreme innatist theory. These kinds of definitions are often applied in studies of language within a cognitive science framework and in neurolinguistics. === Formal symbolic system === Another definition sees language as a formal system of signs governed by grammatical rules of combination to communicate meaning. This definition stresses that human languages can be described as closed structural systems consisting of rules that relate particular signs to particular meanings. Saussure also introduced several basic dimensions of linguistic analysis that are still fundamental in many contemporary linguistic theories, such as the distinctions between syntagm and paradigm, and the Langue-parole distinction, distinguishing language as an abstract system (langue), from language as a concrete manifestation of this system (parole). === Modern linguistics === In the 1960s, Noam Chomsky formulated the generative theory of language. According to this theory, the most basic form of language is a set of syntactic rules that is universal for all humans and which underlies the grammars of all human languages. This set of rules is called Universal Grammar; for Chomsky, describing it is the primary objective of the discipline of linguistics. Thus, he considered that the grammars of individual languages are only of importance to linguistics insofar as they allow us to deduce the universal underlying rules from which the observable linguistic variability is generated. In opposition to the formal theories of the generative school, functional theories of language propose that since language is fundamentally a tool, its structures are best analyzed and understood by reference to their functions. Formal theories of grammar seek to define the different elements of language and describe the way they relate to each other as systems of formal rules or operations, while functional theories seek to define the functions performed by language and then relate them to the linguistic elements that carry them out. The framework of cognitive linguistics interprets language in terms of the concepts (which are sometimes universal, and sometimes specific to a particular language) which underlie its forms. Cognitive linguistics is primarily concerned with how the mind creates meaning through language. Conversely, in Latin, both Dominus servos vituperabat and Servos vituperabat dominus mean "the master was reprimanding the slaves", because servos, or "slaves", is in the accusative case, showing that they are the grammatical object of the sentence, and dominus, or "master", is in the nominative case, showing that he is the subject. Latin uses morphology to express the distinction between subject and object, whereas English uses word order. Another example of how syntactic rules contribute to meaning is the rule of inverse word order in questions, which exists in many languages. For example, "the cat" is one phrase, and "on the mat" is another, because they would be treated as single units if a decision was made to emphasize the location by moving forward the prepositional phrase: "[And] on the mat, the cat sat". There are many different Word order type is relevant as a typological parameter, because basic word order type corresponds with other syntactic parameters, such as the relative order of nouns and adjectives, or of the use of prepositions or postpositions. Such correlations are called implicational universals. For example, most (but not all) languages that are of the SOV type have postpositions rather than prepositions, and have adjectives before nouns. All languages structure sentences into Subject, Verb, and Object, but languages differ in the way they classify the relations between actors and actions.

Our research contributes to debates about the role of Universal Grammar constraints and crosslinguistic influence in sequential bilingual acquisition and use. We investigate experimentally how adult Romanian L1-English L2 bilinguals interpret sequential adjectival modifiers of a noun in recursive set-subset contexts in both languages (e.g., <i>flori mici roşii</i>, lit. 'flowers small red' in Romanian L1, <i>red small flowers</i> in English L2, meaning 'the subset of red flowers among the set of small flowers', and not the coordinative 'the red and small flowers'). We ask whether the Recursive Set-Subset Ordering (RSSO) Constraint is observed in both Romanian L1 and proficient English L2 speakers, such that the adjective closer to the head noun indicates the set and the adjective further away indicates the subset. Our study employs a story-based, forced choice comprehension task to test RSSO against Adjective Ordering Restrictions (AORs), as two competing possible sources for adjective ordering and interpretation. While AOR captures ordering preferences of adjectives naming conceptual properties (e.g., A_Size A_Color N in English, N A_Color A_Size in Romanian), RSSO posits a structure-dependent principle in terms of sets and subsets (e.g., A_Subset A_Set N in English, N A_Set A_Subset in Romanian). We find that bilinguals adhere to the RSSO in both languages even in contexts where AOR and RSSO are in conflict. This finding supports RSSO's status as a UG syntactic-semantic constraint. Interestingly, for a few participants, we also found evidence for crosslinguistic influence stemming from language-specific differences in branching directionality, linear order, and AORs.