[susan53]

All languages have grammar, and when I talk about form/grammar I don't just mean verb forms. What I'm arguing against is the view that choice of form is governed by some random grammatical rule. It's not - as I said, grammatical forms express meanings, and the form chosen will reflect the meaning that the speaker/writer wants to express. and that depends on the context. The sentence you quoted was a perfect example of that, but it would be true of any grammatical "rule" - whether verb forms or not, English or not.

For example, a dictionary will tell you that the word "piano" is "countable" and the "rule" for uncountables will tell you that this means it can be used with a/an + singular or plural but not "some". Which would suggest that a phrase which used the expression "some piano" was "incorrect".

But now look at it from the "grammar is meaning" perspective. That would say that grammar gives us the choice of categorising objects as countable or uncountable. If we choose to categorise them as countable we'll use a/an + singular or plural, and if we choose to categorise them as uncountable we'll choose some + singular. We're not constrained by a "rule" - rather we are able to use the grammatical distinction to express the meaning we wish to.


Now, when we talk about pianos we usually see them as single objects, so generally we choose to categorise them as countable - I bought a piano yesterday. But that doesn't mean that piano "can't" be an uncountable noun or that it's "incorrect" to use it as such. Change the context and the meaning you want to express may change radically. Imagine a children's book which has as characters a mummy termite and a baby termite. For them the piano is food - and we genrally see food as uncountable masses - think about cheese, chocolate, bread etc. So in the book, when the baby termite is hungry, the mummy says to him : Come into the sitting room and have some piano. There's nothing "incorrect" about this - it's a logical application of the grammatical distinction based on the meaning the speaker wants to express.