Grammar. Every language has it. In fact, having rules that govern how words, meanings & structures fit together is almost part of the definition of what makes a language a language.
But are there rules governing those rules? Are there hidden constraints on what grammars can look like, or can languages evolve in any direction imaginable?
Linguists have debated this question for decades. Some argue that language is shaped largely by history & chance. Others suggest that human cognition, communication & learnability place limits on the kinds of grammatical systems that emerge. A recent study by Annemarie Verkerk, Olena Shcherbakova, Hannah Haynie & colleagues, published in Nature Human Behaviour, brings an unprecedented amount of evidence to this debate.
To investigate this, the researchers analysed grammatical data from more than 1,700 languages using one of the largest cross-linguistic databases ever assembled. Their aim was simple to state but ambitious to answer: are some types of grammar consistently more likely to emerge than others?
The Study
The researchers analysed grammatical data from more than 1,700 languages drawn from the Grambank database.
Rather than simply counting language features, they used Bayesian spatiophylogenetic analyses. In plain English, that means they combined:
- grammatical information from hundreds of language features
- language family relationships
- geographical distribution
- statistical models that reconstruct how grammatical traits may have evolved over time
This approach allowed them to examine whether particular grammatical features emerge independently across unrelated languages or whether change tends to follow recurring pathways.
The goal was to identify long-term patterns in grammatical evolution rather than simply describe how languages differ today.
The Findings
The researchers found strong evidence that grammatical evolution is not completely open-ended.
Some grammatical systems appeared repeatedly across unrelated language families, suggesting that languages are pulled towards a limited set of stable solutions.
Key findings included:
- Many grammatical features showed recurring evolutionary patterns across different language families.
- Certain grammatical configurations were much more common than would be expected by chance.
- The statistical models suggested the presence of enduring constraints on how grammar changes over time.
- These constraints remained visible even after accounting for language ancestry & geographical factors.
In other words, languages may be enormously diverse, but that diversity seems to operate within a set of hidden boundaries.
A useful analogy is architecture. Buildings around the world look very different, yet architects must still work within the constraints imposed by gravity. Languages may be similar. They can evolve in countless ways, but not every imaginable grammatical system appears to be equally viable.
Why this matters
The findings connect to a long-running debate in linguistics.
For decades, scholars have explored whether languages are shaped primarily by:
- universal cognitive pressures
- communicative efficiency
- historical accident
- cultural transmission
The idea that language is constrained is often associated with thinkers such as Joseph Greenberg, whose typological universals highlighted recurring patterns across languages, & later work by researchers investigating linguistic typology, language evolution & cognitive constraints.
This study does not claim that all languages share one fixed grammar. Rather, it suggests that over thousands of years of change, languages repeatedly gravitate towards particular grammatical solutions.
For language teachers, that’s an intriguing reminder that learners are not just mastering the quirks of English. They are working with a language system that reflects broader tendencies in how human languages organise meaning.
Teacher Takeaways?
- Many learner errors may reflect alternative grammatical patterns that are perfectly natural in other languages rather than simple “mistakes”.
- Cross-linguistic comparison can help learners see that English is one solution among many, not the default model of language.
- Language awareness activities become richer when learners explore why certain patterns seem common across unrelated languages.
The study is also a reminder of how much linguistics has changed. Questions once addressed through small samples can now be explored using massive databases, computational modelling & global language evidence.
Yet the core question remains surprisingly human: when languages change, how much freedom do they really have?
How much of grammar is historical accident, and how much reflects deeper constraints on human language?
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