ABSTRACT
I shall focus my comments on the question: What are the building blocks of the principles and rules of universal grammar and particular grammar? One plausible candidate is grammatical relations (subject, object). For example, Chomsky suggests that a verb like 'break' in English "must be specified in the lexicon as an item that assigns a certain 0-role to its object and that (given an object) assigns a certain 0-role to its subject." And later that "in Japanese and many other languages, subjects (whether thematic or not) and only subjects can be antecedents for the reflexive element." Thus grammatical relations might enter into the formulation of rules forming part of the theory of 0-roles and part of the theory of binding.
