"It is not that grammar is one or another of these analyses, but that sentences exhibit simultaneously all of these properties." Harris's treatment of these as tools of analysis rather than theories of language, and his way of using them to work toward an optimal presentation for this purpose or that, contributed to the perception that he was engaged in "hocus-pocus" with no expectation that there was any absolute truth to the matter.

Harris's central methodological concern beginning with his earliest publications was to avoid obscuring