On ''what there is''

Grammar is the way we structure our language.

I lived through 2 intellectual and almost spiritual ectasy in my life...

The discovery of the distribution of prime numbers...But this is another story...

And the deep meaning behind ANY "apparently arbitrary" rule of grammar...

People who think that grammar of any language is arbitrary are deluded or ignorant of linguistic...Grammars mirror completely the neuro activity of our brain in a different mode of expression in each culture...

i cannot vouch too much for Gustave Guillaume psychomechanic of language and discourse.... Alas! only in french....


Grammar is boring if we stay at his surface level, in his deep internal mechanism it is like a LSD trip in a higher mathematic....

It takes a genius to guide us.... Guillaume is certainly one in more than 40 books.... If you read french try it....




For me there is 2 levels in language dynamic genesis:

The deep motivation of sound-speech on one unconscious level on a long time scale in relation with words construction and formation and the " feeling" aspect of human constitution ..

And a corresponding relative demotivation of the sound speech which correspond to what we describe generally as sentence "grammar" in a more conscious level corresponding to the " thinking" aspect of human constitution...

The 2 opposite mechanisms work together on 2 levels...This idea is mine, not strictly in Guillaume like i expose it here... But it gives the flavor of my reflection...

These 2 levels could be resumed in a simplest way if you remark that they match and correspond to poetic mode working and the prosaic mode working of language....

Now for the REASON to be REASON these 2 working mode are necessary if not, human degenerate into irrational animal or so called "rational" machine....

 Then to be "human" is being able to create and accomodate together all derivative modes of these 2 archetypal symbolic matrix and modes : the poetic and the prosaic in language...

millecarbon, ''deed'' and ''did'' explain your problem . Ever heard
about ''brain drain'' from Europe to USA. Many Germans become
university professors in America. Lew told us to have had German professor who give them lessons about Kant. Then think of
Enstein, Goedel, Tarski , Carnap , etc,etc. Neither of them speak
English as ''first language'' nor with ''perfect grammar''. They
were obviously not invited to America because of their English.
What then for? I got not only ''did'' as correction of my ''deed''
but also remark : ''English is not your first language''. My answer
was that English is my 4th language. I have not seen reaction
of this member in this context. Well speaking about ''context'' .
There is the meaning of words to find. Not in isolation like ''did''
and ''deed''. The so called ''generative power of language'' is not
in grammar but in ''free combinations of morpheme'' by which
new words are ''composed'' with new meaning. You are only
demonstrating your lack of knowledge of which you are, uh,
not conscious . So, it seems, this ''entity'' consciousness does
''exist'' . Aka is ''there''. 

Where is Chauncey the gardener when we need him?

Not to be prosaic or anything, but languages constantly evolve. Differing dialects evolve among different groups of speakers. When enough changes happen and these various dialects become unintelligible to the other, the new dialects are now officially different languages. There's no right or wrong here. One language is not better or more pure than the other. Think of Latin. Think of Latin's descendants French and Italian. Think of Modern German and Modern English.

The evolution of language does not contradict the existence of these 2 levels but is a consequence of it .....