If the clock breaks. A short excursus from machine-grammars to nondeterministic-grammars.

Abstract

If we were to use a metaphor to summarise the long path that led us from the Stoics and Alexandrians to the various contemporary grammars, we could say that the grammar of a language has been conceived for a long time as a well organised machine, built making use of more or less refined ways and formal apparatuses. Therefore, an obvious question arises: which was the grammar model that, despite some shallow differences, was successful? A question of this kind arrives in a systematic and coherent way with Maurice Gross in the mid-1970s, with the discovery of the salience of the Lexicon in defining the form of grammar. In fact, the lexicon of a language, which was originally used to check theoretical hypotheses, becomes the heart of the general model of grammar. This calls into question notions that had seemed completely certain in the tradition, precisely, those of "rule" and "exception".