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MAY, CAN and the expression of permission

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 June 2016

Patrick Duffley ,
Sandra Clarke  and
Walter Hirtle
Patrick Duffley
Affiliation:
Fonds Gustave Guillaume, Université Laval
Sandra Clarke
Affiliation:
Fonds Gustave Guillaume, Université Laval
Walter Hirtle
Affiliation:
Fonds Gustave Guillaume, Université Laval
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Extract

Any system is necessarily both one, by virtue of its governing principle, and several internally, by virtue of the positions it contains. No system can contain just one element. By nature and by definition a system is binary: it must contain at least two elements to be a system at all. (Translated from Guillaume 1973:175)

In any linguistic system—and this is the basic condition for systematizing—there is … a before and an after within which and between which the mind moves, crossing over the dividing-line which separates these two positions, and that is why a linguistic system necessarily has a kinetic basis in the mind. (Translated from Guillaume 1969:160)

Type
Papers on the Psychomechanics of Language/Articles sur la psychomécanique du langage
Information
Canadian Journal of Linguistics/Revue canadienne de linguistique , Volume 26 , Issue 2 , Fall 1981 , pp. 179 - 193
Copyright
Copyright © Canadian Linguistic Association 1981

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