Who knew? While studying postmodernism and the theories of deconstructionalism and poststructuralism, I have found that they both come back to a book on grammar. This is from my Routledge Companion to Postmodernism: "Swiss linguist Ferdinand de Saussure, who revolutionized the study of linguistics in his posthumously published Course in General Linguistics (1916). Saussure's major point about language is that it was above all a system: a system with rules and regulations (or internal grammar) that governed how the various elements of language interacted...The linguistic model set up by Saussure formed the basis of structuralist analysis, which applied it to systems in general, making the assumption that every system had an internal grammar that governed its operations. The point of structuralist analysis was to uncover this grammar...Ultimately, what poststructuralists object to is the overall tidiness of the structuralist enterprise, where there are no loose ends and everything falls neatly into place."
BUT, grammar is not neat and tidy. Things to do not always fall into place. There are always "irregular verbs" and exceptions to every rule. There is no way I am the first one to make this connection. What went wrong?
I think you are on to something here. What might Steven Pinker say? He likes the irregular verbs "because of what they tell us about the history of the language and the human minds that have perpetuated it."
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