> Of course there are language universals. It is just that they are not universals of form—that is, not particular kinds of linguistic symbols or [[word class|grammatical categories]] or [[syntax|syntactic]] constructions—but rather they are universals of communication and [[cognitive|cognition]] and [[human body|human physiology]]. ^universal raises interesting point: what even do we mean by [[context-free text representations]] > When people speak in a [[human language|language]] that is totally unfamiliar to us, we have no way of understanding what they are trying to say. Prelinguistic infants are in an even worse situation. Not only do they not know what adults are trying to say, they do not even know *that* adults are trying to say something. They do not even know what "saying something" is. Without an understanding of linguistic [[symbol]]s and how they work, it is all just [[noise]]. ^noise [[2003TomaselloBiologicalCulturalOntogenetic]]