ABSTRACT
The ancient Mediterranean world is a useful point of departure – though perhaps not the most obvious one – for recounting the history of ideas about universal grammar and second language learning in the west. There are several reasons. First, many ancient Mediterranean cultures were densely multi-lingual, with speakers of diverse languages in direct contact with each other. Second, we have evidence going that far back of human curiosity about language. (The earliest records, word lists which compare Sumerian and Akkadian morphological facts, date from around 1600 BCE.)1 Third, Greek philosophers were very concerned with concepts of universals, although they did not extend that interest to language. The Romans broke ground in other ways, creating a cultural ideal of bilingualism and the first, fragmentary, comparative grammars. Neither the Greeks nor Romans left records of reflection on universal grammar or second language learning. That would not emerge for centuries; but when it did, it built on the experiences and intellectual products of ancient Greece and Rome. Therein lies the rationale for beginning the story here.
