Craig,

"Describing" is exactly what you are talking about. Descriptive 
discourse linguistics describes HOW speakers and writers achieve 
coherence, information flow, and all that important stuff by noting 
which forms are consistently used to accomplish these objectives. There 
are many sorts of descriptive linguistics: structuralism was one, 
generative linguistics as founded by Chomsky is one, cognitive 
linguistics is one, and discourse analysis is one, as are systemics and 
Dutch-style functionalism.

An ongoing debate within linguistics is description vs. explanation. 
The ultimate goal of linguistic theory is to do both. I am, perhaps, 
glossing over the explanatory qualities of cognitive and discourse 
linguistics. There is a strong explanatory element. One tiny example is 
the principle of iconicity I mentioned in my last post. Humans respond 
well when a form can be perceived as similar to or mimicking a 
function. Hence the tendency in every language to put modifiers inside 
constituent phrases with their heads. A computer can easily be 
programmed to interpret the following:

1. Bring me the shirt, pants, tie, jacket, and socks blue, cream, 
paisley, dark blue, white.

As

2. Bring me the white shirt, dark blue pants, paisley tie, cream 
jacket, and blue socks.

All you have to do is program the computer to assign the words after 
the last noun to the nouns in reverse order. Humans have not invented 
syntax of the type in 1. because our brains do not do as well with that 
kind of processing as they do with iconic structure. The color of an 
item is an intimate part of that item, so putting the words for the 
item and its color close together easily symbolizes the relation.

What you want is explanation, and that's the term I should be using. 
Prescriptive grammar does provide some explanations -- iconicity and 
ambiguity avoidance are good reasons to avoid misplaced modifiers. But 
they don't go as deep into the reasons for a rule. Unfortunately, many 
of their explanations are unsound (such as illogic and double 
negatives), and some rules have no explanation from within the language 
(split infinitive prohibition).

Descriptive linguistics (with the explanations it provides) CAN win. As 
to fragments, there are easy explanations. But I have something to do, 
so maybe I can give those another time.

Dr. Johanna Rubba, Associate Professor, Linguistics
Linguistics Minor Advisor
English Department
California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo
E-mail: [log in to unmask]
Tel.: 805.756.2184
Dept. Ofc. Tel.: 805.756.2596
Dept. Fax: 805.756.6374
URL: http://www.cla.calpoly.edu/~jrubba

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