[riverkid]

Unquestionably, there are rules for language. There are millions of them, Amigo. But one has to be careful to distinguish what are actually rules. The "rules" that have been taught over the years to primary school, junior high and senior high students and college students were mostly not rules, they were prescriptions, a different ball of wax.

Some of these prescriptions: use 'that' for restrictive clauses and 'which' for nonrestrictive; use 'who' for people, not 'that'; 'can' cannot be used to ask permission; don't start a sentence with a conjunction; don't end a sentence with a preposition; don't split infinitives; ...