easily imagined errors

[Enrique Figueroa E.]

My vote (both hands up!) goes to Aske and Geertz!!
Max

On Sat, 19 Apr 1997, Sherman Wilcox wrote:

> On 4/19/97 6:59 PM, Daniel L. Everett said,
>
> >The problem you are
> >going to have convincing a generative syntactician is that it shows too
> >little knowledge of the complexities of structure-dependency. The
> >"cognitive unit" business is just hand-waving.
>
> I'm reminded of something Clifford Geertz said many years ago: "To set
> forth symmetrical crystals of significance, purified of the material
> complexity in which they were located, and then attribute their existence
> to autogenous principles of order, universal properties of the human
> mind, or vast, a priori _weltanschauungen_, is to pretend a science that
> does not exist and imagine a reality that cannot be found."
>
> According to Dan, the complexities of structure-dependency *cannot* be
> merely an imagined reality -- this is *true* knowledge. And yet when
> Brian brings up cognitive units (a concept which I would guess he can
> support with a fair amount of empirical evidence, not just linguistic but
> also psychological, neurological, and computer modeling), Dan says this
> is merely hand-waving.
>
> Sherman Wilcox
> Dept. of Linguistics
> University of New Mexico
>