Abstract By examining and comparing the linguistic patterns in a self-built corpus of Chinese-English translations produced by WeChat Translate , latest online machine translation app from most popular social media platform (WeChat) China, this study explores such questions as whether or not to what extent simplification normalization (hypothesized Translation Universals) exhibit themselves the...

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...

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...