Another Short History of Linguistics (87)

From internet under the term ‘List of unsolved problems in linguistics’

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_unsolved_problems_in_linguistics

We find such questions:

·         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 delineate 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?

These questions looked like an identical equation of math, its definition is:  an equation that is satisfied for all values of the literal symbols. In other words it is a sentence that you don’t worry about putting what symbols in it, it always a good, balanced equation and no one can find fault for it. So once a linguist study these problems, he will never do anything wrong for they are meaningless questions.