Beyond universals and particulars in language

Abstract

In his target article “General linguistics must be based on universals (or nonconventional aspects of language)”, Martin Haspelmath invites us to reconsider the distinction between general linguistics and the linguistics of a particular language. The distinction is clearly useful to demarcate foci of interest and job descriptions. Also, it helps clarify what we expect our theories and models to achieve in terms of data fit: In general linguistics, we expect theories and models to capture something about the general nature of language Show more