Are rules and entries enough? Historical reflections on a longstanding controversy

Abstract

For language to function we clearly need two formal ordering principles: lexical entries and rules. Clahsen's target article provides multiple empirical evidence for this distinction, but this may be simply to overconfirm the undeniable and to overlook the hidden motor of language use and language development, namely, function. Since at least 1859, linguists have argued for the primacy of function, and these arguments are worth rediscovering today.