Re: Universal grammar

On Fri, Jun 06, 2003 at 09:55:09AM -0700, James Worlton wrote:

> Is there a good reference (or set of them) for
> grammatical comparisons between languages? How about a
> set of Universal grammatical points. (I have googled
> for it, but only find philosophical appproaches. I
> want practical! :)).) My goal in looking at such
> things would be to understand better how communication
> works with different sets of rules, which I could then
> choose from for my own project.
Wouldn't this be the book Describing Morphosyntax?  Or do you mean
something more abstract?

(As for the lack of books listing grammar universals, I believe it's
because noone was ever able to identify a system of universals that
accounted clearly and usefully for the data... they're still working
on it, with competing theories.)

Amanda