form versus meaning

[Daniel L. Everett]

I do not believe that a field is defined by its methodology but by the
questions that it asks. The core questions of linguistics have to do with
phonology, syntax, and morphology (and that will get about 1% agreement
on this list). Semantic, discourse, diachronic and other questions are
crucial, of course, but all rely to a greater or lesser degree to the
answers on morphology, syntax, and phonology, as do questions asked by
psycholinguistics. Psycholinguistics is secondary for that reason.

-- DLE

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Dan Everett
Department of Linguistics
University of Pittsburgh
2816 CL
Pittsburgh, PA 15260
Phone: 412-624-8101; Fax: 412-624-6130
http://www.linguistics.pitt.edu/~dever