The book pursues a usage-oriented strategy of language description by infusing it with the central concept of post-structural semiotics and literary theory - that of intertextual memory. Its principal claim is that all new facts of language are grounded in the speakers' memory of previous experiences of using language. It is a ""speech to speech"" model: every new fact of speech is seen as emerging out of recalled fragments that are reiterated and manipulated at the same time.