Yet formalists have rationalized some of their arbitrary decisions into a principle of simplicity, according to which the best language description is the one which presents the fewest possible units. When they come across a situation where one type of distinction is found in position A and another type in position B, they never stop before they have convinced themselves, if not others, that the two type are nothing but avatars of the same distinction.
- Martinet (1962), Pag. 9