Can grammars talk?

Frank Richter

I propose to consider the question: Can grammars talk? One might think that this should begin with definitions of the terms grammar and talk. The definitions might be framed so as to reflect, as far as possible, the ordinary use of these words. But this strategy is dangerous. If the meaning of grammar and talk is to be found by examining how the words are commonly used, it is difficult to escape the conclusion that the answer to the question should be sought in an interdisciplinary survey of linguists, philologists, classicists, literary scholars, language teachers, corpus linguists, and computational modelers, all of whom have professional reasons to speak of grammar, though not always of the same thing. Such a survey would no doubt be revealing. But it would not settle the question I want to ask. Instead of attempting such definitions, I shall replace the question by another, closely related to it, but expressed in terms that are more directly suited to the present discussion.