universally characteristic language

Language, at its core, is a system of communication used by humans. While languages differ greatly in their specific structures, all known languages share fundamental characteristics. These include the use of words or wordlike elements combined according to rules to form sentences, a distinction between noun-like and verb-like components, and the ability to embed clauses within sentences.1

The study of these commonalities is known as universal grammar, which proposes that humans have innate capacities for language acquisition. This innate ability suggests that all languages share a set of fundamental grammatical categories and relations.23

Languages can also be classified by their structural features, such as isolating, agglutinative, and inflectional types, though most languages exhibit traits from all categories to varying degrees. Despite these structural differences, all languages are products of historical processes and function as self-sufficient systems of communication.1