Page 43 - A GRAMMAR OF BHOJPURI _ PhD Dissertation 2020 TU

2001a: xv). Similarly, Both Cartesian and anti-Cartesian formalists have also not
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denied function of language though they emphasize on its form.
Chomsky (2009:77) observes that language serves as a medium of thought
begins to be rephrased as the view that language has a constitutive function with
respect to thought. Furthermore, the study of the creative aspect of language use

develops from the assumption that linguistic and mental processes are virtually
identical, language providing the primary means for free expression of thought and

feeling, as well as for the functioning of the creative imagination (Chomsky 2009:78).
Therefore, Givon (2001a:xvi) pays heed to Chomsky's exhortation to seek

universal principles, while affirming the mental reality of syntactic structures.
Conclusively, Givon (2001a:xvi) mentions that the chasm between the formal

generative approach to grammar and the adaptive perspective it pursue seems at times
unbridgeable, but it can be narrowed down to a relatively small number of issues that
are, in principle, empirical.

Givon (2001a:20) exhibits the functional basis of grammatical typology
stating that "the typological approach to cross-language grammatical diversity has

been historically associated with a functionalist perspective on grammar, from von
Humboldt down to Greenberg". Although Whaley (1997:18) traces back the origin of

this approach to the German linguists Freidrich von Schlegel and Wilhelm von
Humboldt in the 1800s, it was flourished only in the mid-1970s. Greenberg (1963)

infuses the field of linguistics with optimism about potentials of typology to deliver
major discoveries about the nature of language and introduces the modern typological
model of grammar. Obviously, it is an approach to grammar as an alternative to the

transformational-generative theory advocated by Chomsky. Though it seems to be
very close to the traditional grammar in a number of ways but Dryer (2006:210)

reveals that it brought the notions like subject and object to the central stage which
had not played any important role rather in structuralism or in generative grammar.
On the basis of the analysis of 30 languages, Greenberg (1963) claims that the

languages of the world have some unique linguistic features of their own and share
some features with others. The common features shared by all the languages are

termed as universals classified into two types: absolute and implicational universals,

1. "We have seen that the Cartesian view, as expressed by Descartes and Cordemoy as well as by such
professed anti-Cartesians as Bougeant, is that in its normal use, human language is free from
stimulus control and does not serve a merely communicative function, but is rather an instrument for
the free expression of thought and for appropriate response to new situations" (Chomsky 2009:65).
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