All languages in the world are claimed to resemble each other in a remarkable way
from a structural point of view. Notice that we are talking about the grammatical
structure of sentences, and for example not about words, since there is no particularlyChapter 1: What is language?
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striking resemblance between the word meaning ‘book’ in English (book), French
(livre), Arabic (kita), and Chinese (shu). Chomsky says that languages resemble each
other in structural features that are not necessary properties of a languag, and that
these universal structural properties must be explained on the basis of innate
knowledge.