ABSTRACT
Work in linguistics over the past half century has shown that what initially appeared to be a limitless diversity of languages is in fact a collection of highly constrained variants on a single set of universal principles. The differences that appear so important to us are superficial (see e.g., Chomsky, 2000). Some more recent research suggests that there are many universals in literature as well (see Hogan, 2003). But before literary study can benefit from the study of universals, drawing inspiration from linguistics, it is important to understand the linguistic use of the term universal.
