autonomy of syntax

[Noel Rude]

Prof Straight says:

"The Myth of G would have us accept the existence of a Grammar as a
'source' of [interpreting and creating linguistic events] independent of
the processes of reception and expression, and would have us ignore the
evidence for discrepancies, separateness, dissociability, cognitive
multiplexity, and other (often highly 'creative') interactivity of
receptive, expressive, and other language processes.  Arguments for the
existence of G have considerable intuitive appeal, but so do arguments
for numerous other common-sensical and supernatural entities that
rightly play no role in scientific accounts of reality."

        Probably I don't understand what Prof Straight is saying.  Or maybe we
can agree to disagree, perhaps mostly in what Science is.  For it seems
to me that theories can be very abstract and "supernatural" (if you
will).  If they are predictive-refutable--as our grammars and Grammar
should be--they are "scientific".  Also it seems to me that the
messiness of linguistic data, rather than refuting an underlying system,
actually suggests it, whatever flaws there might be in Saussure's langue
et parole and Chomsky's competence-performance models.

        Is this just an esoteric argument where in practice we come down to the
same thing?  Will we both draw up verbal and nominal paradigm charts,
describe grammatical relations, posit functions, etc., and some of us
will call it "grammar" and "rules" and others will call it something
else?

        Aren't we all looking for regularities--whatever we might call them?

        Noel