apocryphal american structuralist assertions two common apocryphal assertions identified american structuralist linguistics wondering either assertions actually made american structuralist 1 language structures vary infinitely many ways statement associated boas hail intro statement also associated martin joos supposedly said something along lines attributing view boas necessarily endorsing 2 distributional method applied rigorously would yield distinct syntactic category every word language possible z harris made assertion though nt seen mention secondary literature particularly interested form assertions made structuralists believed exist interested attribution two beliefs structuralists others thanks bill croft