And this is certainly true. But why?
Precisely because the historico-genealogical method is not a
classification. He who writes history does not classify, and the
philologists themselves have hastened to say that the languages which
can be arranged in a historical series (those whose series have been
traced) are, not distinct and definite species, but a complex of facts
in the various phases of its development.
[Sidenote] _Impossibility of a normative grammar._
Language has sometimes been looked upon as an act of volition or of
choice. But others have discovered the impossibility of creating
language artificially, by an act of will. _Tu, Caesar, civitatem dare
potes homini, verbo non poles!_ was once said to the Roman Emperor.
The aesthetic (and therefore theoretic) nature of expression supplies
the method of correcting the scientific error which lies in the
conception of a (normative) _Grammar_, containing the rules of speaking
well. Good sense has always rebelled against this error. An example of
such rebellion is the "So much the worse for grammar" of Voltaire. But
the impossibility of a normative grammar is also recognized by those who
teach it, when they confess that to write well cannot be learned by
rules, that there are no rules without exceptions, and that the study of
Grammar should be conducted practically, by reading and by examples,
which form the literary taste.
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