It might be tempting, at this point, to indulge in a simile and say that a formalistic description is to the language what a geographic projection is to the actual shape of the continent, in the sense that the centre of the map is fairly accurate, but the margins are distorted, sometimes beyond recognition. But this would give too flattering a picture of the achievements of formalistic linguistics. What really happens, in too many cases, is that the inclusion of margins wraps the whole description in their favour at the expense of what is, linguistically, really vital, as when the basic non-distinctiveness of ‘mute e’ in French is never even mentioned because all centres around the exceptional cases where it assumes a distinctive function.
- Martinet (1962), a pag.19-20