The letters PCG in the sub-title of this book, when expanded, mean "P-Structure C-Structure Grammar", where P stands for "phrase-like" and C for "clause like".
The theory to be unfolded here takes language as having a 'universal' structure. Any individual language therefore has a structure that is a substructure of this universal structure.
The universal structure is something that the human mental or neural mechanism is capable of accepting, adopting or responding to.
Languages are usually taken to be different owing to, and in terms of the details of their individual structural peculiarities, vocabulary and idiomatic expressions. This is so only when we confine ourselves to the details. But when we examine the basic mechanism of language, all languages are seen to be alike in their most abstract theoretical structure.
One might compare, in this connection, the following passage relating to the origins of natural languages:
Even though the process of development is not clear there is one minor side result which is of fascinating suggestiveness: As Hockett and Ascher have defined duality, its development is so far-reaching, so revolutionary and so fruitful as to suggest that it was created only once and in one place. Once created, it would have spread to all hominids irresistibly and speedily. It suggests in other words, the unitary origin of language, and the unitary origin of language sugg-ests, in turn, that men are cultural as well as genetic and biological brothers." (Harry Hoijer [30], p.65).
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