 Cartesian linguistics is intimately connected with the notion of Universal or Philosophical Grammar and, given its revival in Chomsky’s generative approach to language and his naming of Humboldt as one of his immediate precursors, Humboldt’s relation to this tradition needs to be clarified. First of all, Humboldt was decidedly critical of all attempts to construct a system of Philosophical Grammar supposedly underlying all natural languages, because it was patterned after the concepts of Latin and French grammar and in practice had resulted in the writing of grammars that violated the nature of the Non-European languages by forcing them into the procrustean bed of a Western system, whose categories were completely alien to their own inherent structures (GS Vol 5: 355). He did not, however, reject the idea of linguistic universals. On the contrary, these constituted the backbone of his concept of linguistic variety, the fact namely that each language by its structure and formation was able to represent a specific view of the world (Weltansicht). With Kant he believed in the universality of the mental structures and Kantian categories represented for him the rules and the laws of thinking that were ultimately responsible also for the rule systems that govern our linguistic utterances. But he rejected the idea that these structures were themselves already a kind of logical grammar from which a Philosophical Grammar could directly be deduced. Therefore, the comparative study of the languages required some new kind of Universal Grammar to serve as tertium comparationes for the linguist not to lose himself in endless and aimless comparisons. Hence he replaced the traditional principles with a radically different conception that he had derived from his work in comparative anatomy at Jena in 1794: the notion of type, used first in his Plan for a Comparative Anthropology of 1795 and which he now adapted to the study of language. As the title of his treatise Fundamentals of the Linguistic Prototype (Grundzüge des allgemeinen Sprachtypus) suggests, the term stands for the idea of a prototype of language, similar in concept to Goethe’s idea of a protoplant (Urpflanze) which was not to be confused with a real plant but instead embodied the essential features found in all existing plants. But whereas Goethe’s Urpflanze was something quasi-real that could be perceived through one’s mental eyes, Goethe claimed, Humboldt’s type is of a different  nature[5]  Since linguistic form is not something material or something abstracted from natural languages, but pertains to a Verrichtung (performance) namely the production of speech, Humboldt’s prototype embodies the ensemble of elements and rule systems that must be considered common and essential for speech production in all languages (Verfahrensweise); in short, it is a generative rather than a substantive notion. Once established, through a combination of philosophical-methodological reflection and concrete linguistic analysis, the linguistic prototype was to serve and did serve Humboldt as a guide and tertium comparationis for the study and comparison of different languages and language groups. In short, the prototype is not to be seen as an object, a list of specific surface structure features, nor does it resemble any existing actual language, but instead stands for the communality of elements, rules, and structures that underlie all language production. For example, the existence of phonetic elements in a given language, constituting a sound system (Lautsystem) and its individual word always combining a sound-unit with a thought-unit, must be understood as part of the prototypal nature of language, whereas the particular Lautsystem of that language as it resulted from its historical development becomes the subject of specific linguistic investigations. 