Expanding our perspective on the options for formal grammar style brings us to questions about the manner in which the abstract theory of formal languages and the pragmatic theory of sign relations interact with each other.

Formal language theory can seem like an awfully picky subject at times, treating every symbol as a thing in itself the way it does, sorting out the nominal types of symbols as objects in themselves, and singling out the passing tokens of symbols as distinct entities in their own rights.  It has to continue doing that, if not for any better reason than to aid in clarifying the kinds of languages people are accustomed to use, to assist in writing computer programs capable of parsing real sentences, and to serve in designing programming languages people would like to become accustomed to use.

As it happens, the only time formal language theory becomes too picky, or a bit too myopic in its focus, is when it leads one to think one is dealing with the thing itself and not just the sign of it, in other words, when the people who use the tools of formal language theory forget they are dealing with the mere signs of more interesting objects and not the objects of ultimate interest in and of themselves.

There are then a number of deleterious effects at risk of arising from the extreme pickiness of formal language theory, arising, as often the case, when theorists forget the practical context of theorization.  The exacting task of defining the membership of a formal language leads one to think that object and that object alone is the justifiable end of the whole exercise.  The distractions of the mediate objective render one liable to forget one’s penultimate interest lies always with various equivalence classes of signs, not entirely or exclusively with their more meticulous representatives.

When that happens, one typically goes on working oblivious to the circumstance that many details about what transpires in the meantime do not matter at all in the end, and one is likely to remain in blissful ignorance of the fact that many special details of language membership are bound, destined, and pre‑determined to be glossed over with some measure of indifference, especially when it comes to the final constitution of those equivalence classes of signs which answer for the genuine objects of the whole enterprise of language.

Whenever a form of theory, against its initial and its best intentions, succumbs to an absence of mind no longer benign in its main effects, a counterbalancing form of theory is needed to restore the presence of mind all forms of theory are meant to support.

Resources

• Cactus Language • Pragmatics
• Survey of Animated Logical Graphs
• Survey of Theme One Program

cc: Academia.edu • BlueSky • Laws of Form • Ma^thstodon • Research Gate
cc: Conceptual Graphs • Cybernetics • Structural Modeling • Systems Science