Basic term in the natural sciences, social sciences, and humanities as well as in various linguistic schools used to describe, explain, or regulate behavior. Depending on the context, the term can be used to describe such varying concepts as norms, (universal) rules of conduct, formal procedures in calculus or natural laws. In the framework of linguistics, the following interpretations can be established. (a) In school grammar. rules have the intention of being normative; actually, they are descriptions of regularities and exceptions based on selected examples whereby one is forced to call on readers and speakers to use their intelligence and linguistic intuition to fill in holes left by the sometimes vague formulations. (b) In descriptive linguistics, rules are descriptions of regularities that can be empirically observed; they do not have the same normative nature as rules in (a) above, but are still based on a static conception of rule. (c) In contrast to the static understanding of rule outlined above, transformational grammar uses a dynamic understanding of rule to describe linguistic competence. It refers to a production process and is an explicit indication of formal operations that are carried out. For technical details, phrase structure rules, recursive rule, transformation. (d) Based on Wittgenstein’s understanding of meaning, a theoretical understanding of rule oriented around language as act has developed in the framework of semantics and pragmatics since the beginning of the 1970s, which sees language as rule-derived (social) behavior. See J.R.
