Monday, April 27, 2015

If only it were easy

A structural approach, in which syntactic categories are defined using formal rather than semantic criteria is followed wherever possible. Unfortunately, linguistic categories do not always have neat boundaries even when defined in structural terms (Huddleston and Pullum 2002: 90). A category may have central members that possess all of the characteristics typically associated with the category, as well as peripheral members that have only some of these characteristics. Trying to decide which category to assign to a peripheral item is at times a fruitless and artificial endeavor.— Word Order in the Biblical Hebrew Finite Clause, page 48

<idle musing>
As I told someone the other day, "If it were easy, we wouldn't still be arguing about it!" But that's the fun of it, right? Right? Oh, come on—it's fun, right? : )
</idle musing>

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