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The universal basis of local linguistic exceptionality

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 October 2009

Daniel Harbour
Daniel Harbour
Affiliation:
Department of Linguistics, Queen Mary University of London, London, E1 4NS, United Kingdom. harbour@alum.mit.eduhttp://webspace.qmul.ac.uk/dharbour
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Abstract

Evans & Levinson (E&L) claim Kiowa number as a prime example of the semantically unexpected, threatening both Universal Grammar and Linguistic Universals. This commentary, besides correcting factual errors, shows that the primitives required for Kiowa also explain two unrelated semantically unexpected patterns and derive two robust Linguistic Universals. Consequently, such apparent exceptionality argues strongly for Universal Grammar and against E&L.

Type
Open Peer Commentary
Information
Behavioral and Brain Sciences , Volume 32 , Issue 5 , October 2009 , pp. 456 - 457
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2009

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