Ian Roberts
University of Cambridge

Ian Roberts

University of Cambridge
United Kingdom

How to build a language

This tutorial introduces comparative syntax first by looking at the diversity of the world’s languages, then by giving arguments for a Universal Grammar, then by showing diversity and universality can be reconciled in terms of the idea that there is a primitive set of universal “building blocks” for languages, but that these building blocks can be combined in different ways so as to give rise to the attested diversity. Several examples of the building blocks, applied to a range of the world’s languages, will be given.