In the first chapter of Language (1933), Leonard Bloomfield wrote: "when we have adequate data about many languages, we shall have to return to the problem of general grammar and to explain these similarities and divergences [among languages], but this study, when it comes, will be not speculative but inductive." I use the term inductive general grammar for the linguistic programme suggested by that quote.

The following items belong to this line of inquiry, but are mostly subsumed by the ones already listed: