Behavioral and Brain Sciences

Table of Contents - 2009 - Volume 32, Issue 05  

Open Peer Commentary

Language universals: Abstract but not mythological

Mark C. Bakera1

a1 Department of Linguistics, Rutgers University, New Brunswick, NJ 08901. mabaker@ruccs.rutgers.edu http://www.rci.rutgers.edu/~mabaker/

Abstract

I present the so-called Verb-Object Constraint as a serious proposal for a true linguistic universal. It provides an example of the kind of abstraction in linguistic analysis that seems warranted, of how different languages can confirm such a universal in different ways, and why approaches that avoid all abstractness miss important linguistic generalizations.

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