Linguistic Universals and Family Resemblance &mdash;&mdash;A comparative study between Chomsky and Wittgenstein&rsquo;s Philosophical View of Language

FAN  Lianyi

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Foreign Language Learning Theory and Practice ›› 2011, Vol. 2 ›› Issue (1) : 52-59.

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Linguistic Universals and Family Resemblance ——A comparative study between Chomsky and Wittgenstein’s Philosophical View of Language

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Are the sameness or similarities between human natural languages a kind of Wittgenstein’s “language family resemblance” or a kind of Chomsky’s “absolute linguistic universals?” “Absolute linguistic universals” are prior to human language experiences and exclusively exist in all human mind. According to Wittgenstein, though all the family members have this or that similarity, we could not find in them a universal characteristic. We can suppose a “language faculty”, but it doesn’t necessarily mean we can define it. All of our linguistic theories are only a kind of explanations for some specific language phenomenon. It is not a throughout thread but the entanglement of all the threads that makes a rope.

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FAN Lianyi. Linguistic Universals and Family Resemblance ——A comparative study between Chomsky and Wittgenstein’s Philosophical View of Language[J]. Foreign Language Learning Theory and Practice. 2011, 2(1): 52-59

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