Imagine that we want to travel between two points in a rugged landscape. By the very nature of the problem, we have infinitely many ways to do this. However, on

Imagine that we want to travel between two points in a rugged landscape. By the very nature of the problem, we have infinitely many ways to do this. However, once we start imposing certain constraints e.g. that we should always prefer the path that requires the lesser amount of energy, our set of possible solutions narrows down pretty fast. I know particularly aggressive pedants made linguistic rules unfashionable, but most of the time they are merely suggestions of how to get the most of language e. g. how to avoid ambiguities and get your meaning across. Sure, they aren't rules in the sense of constraining every single possible manifestation of language. But no one ever thought that. Not even the pedants: instead they believed that they should constrain every possible manifestation, which implies that they believed they don't.