BASQUE SYNTAX AND UNNERSAL GRAMMAR*

Although the term "universal grammar " has been with us for a very long time, the reality it currently conveys has emerged fairly recently. Up to then, it was a powerless dream, cherished by philosophers, but largely ignored by practical linguists. That being so, it is not altogether surprising that the contacts occasionally established between general linguists and Basque grammarians did not have much impact on the way those grammarians set about their task. This is not to imply that those contacts were fruitless. They were quite useful on other counts. No one can deny the importance for Basque linguistics _ of the extensive contacts between the great universalist Wilhelm von Humboldt and the erudite grammarian Pedro Pablo Astarloa, as was rightly recognized by Luis Michelena in his noteworthy article "Guillaume de Humboldt et la langue basque". Similarly, the scholarly interaction between Hugo Schuchardt and Resurrecci6n Maria de Azkue contributed substantially to the present shape of Basque studies. Nonetheless, in the more confined area of grammatical description, the influence of general linguistics remained rather limited. Even when, thanks to Chomsky's methodological insights, universal gramma