An interesting post on language, at Pedantry. [archive.org] "The most profound orders, language and culture, are made, and the rules for them are constructed only after the fact." That's been my argument for years, at least about things as they exist on the larger scale, but Scott Martens is using it to describe the rules of grammar, arguing that strictly speaking, they don't exist. I may be willing to say that, on principle, but I don't know enough even to begin to make the argument itself. Scott does.