Concepts
- Is there a universal definition of word?
- Is there a universal definition of sentence?
- Are there any universal grammatical categories?
- Can the elements contained in words (morphemes) and the elements contained in sentences (syntactic constituents) be shown to follow the same principles?
- Is it possible to formally circumscribe languages from each other? That is to say, is it possible to use linguistic (rather than social) criteria to draw a clear boundary between two closely related languages with a dialect continuum between their respective standard forms (e.g. Occitan and Catalan)?
- How does grammaticalization function?
- How do creole languages emerge?
Read more about this topic: List Of Unsolved Problems In Linguistics
Famous quotes containing the word concepts:
“Germany collapsed as a result of having engaged in a struggle for empire with the concepts of provincial politics.”
—Albert Camus (1913–1960)
“Science is a dynamic undertaking directed to lowering the degree of the empiricism involved in solving problems; or, if you prefer, science is a process of fabricating a web of interconnected concepts and conceptual schemes arising from experiments and observations and fruitful of further experiments and observations.”
—James Conant (1893–1978)