Abstract
In this essay, the methodological point of departure is the assumption that the Saussurian inherited distinction between diachronic and synchronic levels of description is fictitious and arbitrary and will therefore have to be abandoned in its stringent interpretation (see Baumgärtner's convincing display of arguments (Baumgärtner 1969) and, in the same vein, Kanngießer 1972). Not only, it will be argued, is this meanwhile classical dichotomy unnecessary, and does it fail to account for similarities between semantic change and certain types of human reasoning, but it leads into blind alleys when one attempts to systematize various linguistic phenomena. The integration of catachresis, metaphor, and other figurative usage of lexical items into a theory of grammar are cases in point (Abraham 1975).
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