On the question of linguistic universals

Abstract

This article offers a general discussion of the concept of universals in linguistics (and in general), spelling out different ways of understanding claims to universality and connecting such claims to other (often familiar) related distinctions, terminology and approaches such as competence and performance or I-language and E-language, evolutionary explanations, deep and surface universals, rationalism and empiricism or nature and nurture, realism and nominalism, parametric variation and tendencies, formal and functional approaches, properties or explanations, historical explanations, modularity and structural analogy, so-called meta patterns and minimalism.