‘Imperfezione’ vs ‘perfezione’ dei sistemi linguistici

Abstract

From a purely structural point of view, any language (be it a prestigious cultural language or a dialect anywhere in the world) is perfect. In theory, each linguistic system has its own phonological, morphological, lexical and syntactic systems, which are perfectly functional. The notion of ‘imperfection’ or, better, of ‘inadequacy’, can be attributed to a linguistic system when we analyze its ‘potentialities’ from a sociocultural point of view. The more a linguistic system may be defined as ‘perfect’, the more the sociocultural areas in which it can be used. In this regard, the notion of ‘architecture’ in linguistic systems proves very useful: it is a powerful theoretical device that allows us to seize, thanks to linguistic parameters, the segments ‘composing’ the system and determining their position in an ideal linguistic space.