I am interested in learning grammar and syntax. I use those words because that's what I learned in middle school, perhaps what I'm really trying to learn is more aptly described by the term 'linguistics', but I wouldn't know.
There's many sources to learn English grammar and syntax, but what if I want to understand those concepts in a more abstract setting, not specific to English, Latin, Greek or even something less western like say Arab or Cantonese. Is there a universal linguistic context where somebody can learn the "truths", or rules of grammar independent of a specific language, or do you always have to begin your investigation of these concepts using a specific language?
For a little bit of context: I am fluent in English and Modern Greek, I studied a little bit of Ancient Greek a while ago. I understand a little bit of Italian. This question arose when I was thinking whether learning Ancient Greek grammar would be linguistically "richer" than learning English grammar, from my very naive feeling that ancient Greek has a richer structure to investigate. But then again English is an impressively malleable language with arguably equally interesting linguistic properties. This brings me to my more general question, does it make sense to compare the grammar and syntax of two different languages? Perhaps there are linguistic properties that are attributed to EVERY language human beings develop and in that case I would rather pursue that kind of knowledge.
PS I am not sure if this belongs to the Language site, I avoided the Linguistics site because it feels like that is reserved for researchers. If you feel like this should be moved somewhere else let me know.
