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I read this very interesting article about the diversity of languages in New Scientist. For 50 years scientists have been looking for the universal grammar underlying all languages, but these absolute rules have become a straitjacket.
Any given language is a complex system shaped by many factors, including culture, genetics and history. There seem to be no absolutely universal traits of language, only tendencies. And it is a mix of strong and weak tendencies that characterises the "bio-cultural" hybrid we call language.

After half a century of trying to find a common pattern among all languages it is increasingly clear that they are not the same.

• Some languages have 11 distinct sounds with which to make words, while others have 144. Sign languages have none. As sounds that were once thought impossible are discovered, the idea that there is a fixed set of speech sounds is being abandoned.
• Some languages use a single word where others need an entire sentence. In English, for example, you might say "I cooked the wrong meat for them again". In the Indigenous Australian language Bininj Gun-wok you would say "abanyawoihwarrgahmarneganjginjeng". The more we know about language processing, the less likely it seems that these two structures are processed in the same way.
• Even plurals are not straightforward. The Kiowa people of North America use a plural marker that means "of unexpected number". Attached to "leg", the marker means "one or more than two". Attached to "stone", it means "just two".
• Some major word classes are not found in all languages. English, for example, lacks "ideophones" where diverse feelings about an event and its participants are jammed into one word - as in "rawa-dawa" from the Mundari language of the Indian subcontinent meaning "the sensation of suddenly realising you can do something reprehensible, and no one is there to witness it".

Read the article here: http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20627621.000-language-lessons-you-are-what-you-speak.html?full=true