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Integrational Theory of Grammars


The integrational theory of grammars is the theory of linguistic descriptions that has been developed within the general linguistic approach of Integrational Linguistics.

Differently from most other approaches in linguistics, Integrational Linguistics emphasizes a distinction between theories of language and theories of language descriptions. Integrational Linguistics has therefore developed both a general theory of language, the Integrational Theory of Language, and a theory of linguistic descriptions.

In Integrational Linguistics, a description of a language is understood as a theory (formulated by the linguist) of the language; similarly, for descriptions of varieties or individual idiolects. Traditionally, grammars are most important among such descriptions, which also include descriptions of (parts of) the variety structure of a language, such as a description of a language's development in time or distribution in geographical space. 'Grammar' is here used in a broad sense, covering not only morphological and syntactic but also phonological and semantic descriptions. A description of the lexicon, i.e. a dictionary, is again construed as a theory of its object (Drude 2004). Since the Integrational Theory of Grammars deals with the relation between language descriptions and their objects, it presupposes both the Integrational Theory of Linguistic Variability and the Integrational Theory of Language Systems.

On an IL view, grammars have three fundamental properties:

Typically, the axioms and theorems of a grammar of a language or language variety are formulated as universal implications over the systems of the idiolects in the given language or variety. For example, a traditional statement on a language variety, such as

is construed as equivalent to

which may be a sentence of a grammar that contains 'Colloquial American English' as an axiomatic constant, denoting a certain subset of English.


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