universals

True linguistic universals are very few, and frequently seem to me to be more general cognitive universals in linguistic disguise.

If there ever is a country with a majority of female politicians across all levels, would this mean Pinker's universals hypothesis is completely false?

But these are cultural universals - the fact is that all societies consider these things, including torture, to be immoral and crimes (and yes they still occur of course).

You were almost coherent until you get to your assumptions about 'what people would have me believe' about linguistic universals.

His interest in games was part of his exposition of the nature of universals (forms, essences).

There is this assumption that Aliens would be atheist, but that's actually pretty unlikely considering religion is one of the human universals.

The obvious route, and probably the most common route, focused on human universals.

It's like saying that eating and defecating are human universals; while true, I note they aren't on the list.

Really, almost any story that stirs does so by evoking these universals.

I know hacker news is pretty American in its bias, but it hate when people talk in terms of universals.

There are many universals that can be explained by generative grammar.

There will always be variation, but they are variations on universals.

• There are "human universals" -- themes people accept automatically, without marketing, as opposed to non-universals, which have to be taught.

Most so-called "universals" are rather implicational tendencies, which do not require appeals to native grammatical knowledge to explain.

I was going to say "learn the universals, not the particulars" but you have said it well.

Focus on universals to gain credibility like say with David Buss's 1989 paper "Sex differences in human mate preferences: Evolutionary hypotheses tested in 37 cultures".

That 'universals' guy seems actually to be Donald Brown, and his book is 'Human Universals'.