  Chomsky and others (e.g., Chomsky 1988:46-7; Pinker 1994:237-8)  have pointed to the existence of ‘linguistic universals’  as supporting the idea that language is the product of a distinct  faculty of mind. Universals are features thought to be common to all  natural languages, such as the existence of constraints on the  movement of elements during a derivation or, less controversially,  the existence of a syntactic distinction between nouns and verbs. But not only is the existence of true universals a contested matter (see  e.g., Maratsos 1989:111), it is unclear what the correct explanation of them — assuming they exist — is would be.