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System and Structure

. What we are mainly motivated by in our study of language is to observe linguistic behavior and then determine what kind of patterning, what system and structure is internal to it. We do not impose our own system on it, we try to discover the system and structure that is inherent in language. We assume it is systematic; we often hear people say things like ``oh our spoken dialect has no grammar" or ``there are no rules; people just say what they like". This is of course patently absurd to anyone who does try to ``say anything the way they like" in a language not their own. Could we take the previous sentence and say it like this?

This ly-patent absurd anyone to who they like to ``say anything does try the way " language-in their own not is, course of.

All languages are systematic and have structure; it may not be wholly systematic and rule-governed, in the sense that we may not be able to discover all the rules and all the systematicity, or there may even be areas that defy systematization. But we are going to assume that unless proven otherwise, there is system that we can discover and that is the goal of linguistics. If the system and structure we discover is different from what previous analyses of the language have said, we will ask for proof that the new description is better, and then we will replace the old description with the new one. And we will also recognize that there are areas of language that are vague, ambiguous, in flux, shifting, being negotiated. But at the core we expect to find a code that has its own rules.


Harold Schiffman
Fri Jan 17 09:48:04 EST 1997