Chomsky, Grammar, Essentialism ( Was Re: [lbo-talk] Prose Style, was Time to Get Religion)

joanna 123hop at comcast.net
Fri Dec 8 11:57:53 PST 2006


Jerry Monaco wrote:


>
> The _only_ linguistic universals? Are you sure you want to endorse
> this statement?

Hmmm. I think he was referring to grammatical units --- in this sense "container words" are not grammatical units.

I am also certain that every language has words for family members, but those are not parts of speech either.

What I was taking issue with is the existence of a universal deep grammar that underlies all known and possible languages.

Joanna



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