Frameworks vs. the human mind

[Enrique Figueroa E.]

Beware hocus-pocus lx! Also beware God's truth lx!
The question is ideed crucial, difficult and practically infinitely
discussable! I'd try putting it this way:
Are "esoteric and highly formalised rules" (sorry and ashamed to admit
the phrasing was mine, originally, though I didn't even dream such an
unheaval would come out of it!) THE LINGUIST'S *REPRESENTATION* or THE
LINGUIST'S *EXPLANATION* (or, perhaps, *EXPLICATION*)?
One other thing should be clear, thoguh: as TG points out to me (in a
recent private message regarding the same discussion), there IS (and
there CANNOT NOT BE) a THEORY necessarily implied in every linguist's
approach to any (no matter how punctual aspect of) language.
Max

(PS. I'm not taking sides here, just trying to shed some light on what I
think should be *one* of the cruxes of the ongoing discussion.)

On Fri, 18 Apr 1997, Diego Quesada wrote:

> On Fri, 18 Apr 1997, Dave wrote:
>
> > It *is* possible to show that questions are derived from statements, in
> > certain frameworks.
>
> Because someone else, rather accurately, had written:
>
> > > or as it is represented in people's minds?  In people's ordinary use of
> > > language they do not form sentences by deriving them from other
> > > sentences (eg.  questions from statements).  Outputs of the linguistic
>
> There are "frame-works" that can show you that (Lat.) /audio/ is the
> "underlying synchronic" form of Spanish [oygo] 'I hear'...
>
> Morale:
>         A framework can tell you whatever you want to hear (to make it
>         work... and the cycle goes on), but people's minds is something
>         different from frame-works (that happen to be in some people's
>         minds!)
>
>
> J. Diego Quesada
> University of Toronto
>