Now, one of my hang-ups in the conversation that I wasn't totally cognizant of is your use of "grammar." I've always thought of it as a basically post hoc set of convention-differentiators. As an activity, it didn't begin to arise (in the West) until in and around the 5th century BCE, as you've been saying. I think my trouble has been that you occasionally seem to use the term "grammar" to mean, not just "the categorization of conventional word usage," but also "word usage." This would be a mistake, I think, and it is one that I think Heidegger occasional commits. For instance, it might lead one to say that, before Plato and Aristotle, there _was no differentiation between nouns and verbs_. That would be a mistake and false. There was differentiation, it was simply that nobody was explicitly and articulately _aware_ of what the difference was--speaking a language is a kind of know-how, not a grammatical knowing-that. This isn't to exactly downplay what you are pointing out (following Heidegger and Allen), but just to try and become more aware of what we are exactly talking about. Because it is certainly the case that _after_ we became explicitly aware of the difference between a noun and a verb, that self-conscious awareness (particularly in Aristotle) effected language-patterns. And very specifically and germane to Pirsig and philosophy, it did effect the history and evolution of philosophical discussion.
DM: Of course, Derrida thought it was worth making a play about Grammatology. I certainly see ontology as being what we can say about those aspects of langauge and description that look like some of the most basic or key moves in the play of differentiations that we bring about via language. Most basic in the sense of looking like they have the most impact on everything else we can describe and discuss. Plays like DQ/SQ and subject and object, past and present, near and far, left and right, etc. Ontology/grammar pretty inseparable I'd suggest. Language enriches/transforms our pre/-linguistic sensuous experience and is world disclosing, as the pre-linguistic and sensual is not really a worlded form of experience, nor unworlded either of course, pre-worlded experience we might say.
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