Amorey Gethin

Gethin argues that modern linguistics is a jumble of cabalistic nonsense, and can
be swept away by the simple truth that the key to everything is meaning. Language
acquisition is no puzzle: people learn meanings "by observation and imitation," and
they "join individual meanings together so that they make larger meanings" (p. 9).
That is all one needs to know about language; but modern linguists are afflicted with
a "systemizing mania that pretends to discover new profundity in what everybody
knows already" (pp. 11-12); they fail to see that "there is no such thing as structure
in language" (p. 93). "There is no mystery" (p. 108), there is only meaning.