The main task of descriptive linguistics is, in fact, the answering of the question: What is the best, or even, what is a good way to describe language; or, to describe a par ticular language? It is very clear that the normar answer to this question?namely: Languages may best be described in the terms in which is conventionally described? is valueless when applied to the majority of languages. That is to say, Latin grammar, with its sharp distinction between, for example, verb and noun, and its system of declension and conjugation, cannot afford us a frame for describing a language such as Tahitian, which has no trace of declension or conjugation and, apparently, has one massive part of speech corresponding to the verb, noun, adjective and adverb taken together. Some philologists consider that no satisfactory answer to the question: How may a language be described? has yet been given. Others, however, think that they have given an answer and have established, in several schools already somewhat at war with each other, the subject known as structural linguistics. The main centres of this new subject are, first, many American universities, and then the Uni versities of London, Paris and Copenhagen.