Rules

Abstract

I want now to return to a theme which I introduced in Chapter I. I there briefly sketched an argument for the view that language is a rule-governed system and an argument against the stronger position that language is a rule-constituted system. The case for rule-governedness was, briefly, this: that only if we grant that language users have a shared system of rules for making and understanding claims can we understand how diverse speakers’ finite linguistic resources can be uniformly projected into potentially infinite combinatorial possibilities. The thesis that language is rule-governed, in other words, was offered to account for what I called the creative production competence and the creative recognition competence for claims.