Why is language rule-governed?

Answer 1

AnswerFor the same reason that driving is rule-governed, or the legal system is rule-governed. Just like you have to have rules to get anywhere without getting in an accident... common rules for who yeilds to whom for instance... and just like you have to have rules in a society to know where your rights end and another's start, so that people don't just kill each other for offenses for instance... You have to have common ground to communicate. If we all had different words for the color "pink" for instance... how would we describe something so that someone else would understand? We could describe it for ourselves, sure... but we couldn't communicate that idea or that knowledge to anyone else.

One reason for the rules is that other people have to be able to learn the language. Children can learn the rules through practice and observation... but especially for foreign language learners, there has to be a codified way to explain how the language works. The funny thing is that language isn't based on rules... it doesn't start out that way. We don't decide as we're creating language that i goes before e except after c, and in these certain other exceptions. Language is based on usage. We make up the rules afterward to describe how it works. So, saying that it is rule-governed is only partly true. The language is changing all the time, and the rules don't dictate how it can change. People do... in the way they talk and the slang they make up, and the way they shorten words or add bizarre endings to things, or borrow words from other languages. That's why we have so many bizarre and contradictory rules... because some endings came from one language, some from another... and we have to try to incorporate the rules from a lot of different languages into ours... plus the indiosyncracies that we add on our own.

ANSWERUnfortunately, the author above seems to have skipped linguistics101- the notion of rule-governance as it pertains to language doesn't really have anything to do with telling people how language works- what you're referring to is prescriptive grammar, and is generally the domain of pedants and reference books. Rather, rule governance refers to the intrinsic functional foundations of language itself generally, and there is a succession of basic rules that are fundamental across all languages, given that all languages are molded by the intrinsic human capacity for language- to simplify, language is essentially a human physical property, much like walking- everyone and every culture may have different ways of walking- strutting, mincing, swaggering etc- but we all walk using our legs, not our ears or our knees.

I think that the writer above has mixed themselves up over a fundamental issue- when a linguist says that language is rule-governed, it's not in the same way that a football match is rule-governed. Instead, what we mean by rules here is more akin to the laws of physics- you can't actually break them, they're a simple set of descriptors for explaining how a phenomenon works- it might be easier to describe them as a series of laws or properties (or maybe principles or parameters, perhaps ;)) than as rules, since the latter generally evokes memories of schoolmarms and the like correcting your speech.

The most interesting thing with the rules (as we understand them) is that you don't actually need to learn them, you already know them all at birth- they're all the same for every language, and everyone knows them, you just need to learn which rules are appropriate to select and apply from your innate repertoire when you are learning your language. Think about it- the language you speak has rules regarding what verbs or nouns or participles are- and rules regarding the placement of subjects, objects and various subordinate clauses in a sentence- yet how many native speakers could tell you exactly what most of these things are, much less what the rules for using them are? Not many, but you'll note that all of them follow the rules without even knowing them...

AnswerAs the above answer suggests, linguistics describes regularly occurring features of a language. For example, in English (and some other languages) the most common word order in a statement is: Subject - Verb - Object (SVO). Compare The dog bit the manwith the man bit the dog. The only thing that indicates who is doing the biting and who is getting bitten is the word order. Some languages operate diffently, for example, Latin and Russian, it is the endings of the nouns that indicate this, not the word order. Other languages use other means. In Standard English the third person singular ends in -s, but this is not the case in many non-standard dialects.

However, to claim that 'you already know them all [the rules] at birth- they're all the same for every language, and everyone knows them, you just need to learn which rules are appropriate to select and apply from your innate repertoire when you are learning your language' is inaccurate. Even the most ardent followers of Chomskyan linguistics make less dramatic claims. Kids are born with an innate ability to acquire language. The most important rules are acquired by about age 5 or so. (The universals are pretty banal, for example, that in all lanugages one can ask questions and issue commands as well as make statements).

The answer to the question is, in crude terms, this:

Using a finite (limited) set of rules and a finite (limited) vocabulary, it is possible to create a virtually unlimited set of utterances.

That is the function of rules in language.

Answer 2

Language is rule-governed in order to ensure that communication is effective and understandable among speakers. Rules help to maintain consistency and structure in language, allowing for smooth and coherent interaction. Adhering to rules also helps to convey meaning accurately and avoid misunderstandings.