form versus meaning

[Ellen F. Prince]

I'd sworn I'd go back into lurkitude, but I can't help it -- these are
very important issues to me.

Have I missed something or are we talking about different things? I
understood Dan to say that syntax, phonology, ... were 'core' and Liz
to say there's no such distinction and that psycholinguists were as
'core' as syntacticians. And now we get a long argument from Liz
entirely in terms of methodology.

What is the relevance? Methodologies can vary and objects of study can
vary and they can vary independently...

I for one agree with everything Liz says about methodology and everything
Dan says about 'coreness', is why this troubles me.


P.S.:

>Instead of a theory of grammar, we
>may have a theory of grammar in Building 10.

Would that we did! I believe we'd only have a theory of Building 10's
linguistic META-intuitions (conscious, accessible intuitions about their
unconscious, inaccessible linguistic intuitions). If we actually had a
theory of even ONE person's real grammar (i.e. real, unconscious,
inaccessible linguistic intuitions), that would be just fine, as far as
I'm concerned.