The scientific reason of this
impossibility lies in what we have already proved: that a technique of
the theoretical amounts to a contradiction in terms. And what could a
(normative) grammar be, but just a technique of linguistic expression,
that is to say, of a theoretic fact?
[Sidenote] _Didactic purposes._
The case in which Grammar is understood merely as an empirical
discipline, that is to say, as a collection of groups useful for
learning languages, without any claim whatever to philosophic truth, is
quite different. Even the abstractions of the parts of speech are in
this case both admissible and of assistance.
Many books entitled treatises of Linguistic have a merely didactic
purpose; they are simply scholastic manuals. We find in them, in truth,
a little of everything, from the description of the vocal apparatus and
of the artificial machines (phonographs) which can imitate it, to
summaries of the most important results obtained by Indo-European,
Semitic, Coptic, Chinese, or other philologies; from philosophic
generalizations on the origin or nature of language, to advice on
calligraphy, and the arrangement of schedules for philological spoils.
But this mass of notions, which is here taught in a fragmentary and
incomplete manner as regards the language in its essence, the language
as expression, resolves itself into notions of Aesthetic.
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