Re: OT: Secret wars

In a message dated 01/22/02 10:15:12 PM, cecibean@BITSTREAM.NET writes:

<< Ha ha, only serious.

http://www.tlg.uci.edu/~opoudjis/Play/antichomsky.html

The quote about the tape recorder has always struck fear into my heart. :\ >>

    This is the quote in question: "Similarly, if you're a linguist, you
don't just turn on a tape-recorded and start taping people."  Wow!  Might as
well have just said, "What you all say doesn't interest me; what I write for
you to say does."  It's like trying to gain information on questions you have
all the answers to, supplying the answers, and the verifying the results,
since they were what you started out with in the first place.  Why leave your
room at all?  (Un)luckily (?), I've been taught a different version of syntax
in every class I've taken, so I've pretty much just formulated my own ideas,
which have to do with sentences being put together one word at a time, and
each word giving a range of possible words that could follow, and, depending
on which word comes, changes the type of sentence.  In other words,
transformations don't exist.  Don't worry so much, I would say; it'll come
out right in the end.

[Note: That "tape-recorded" should be "tape-recorder"--not my error.]

-David

"Zi hiwejnat zodZaraDatsi pat Zi mirejsat dZaCajani sUlo."
"The future's uncertain and the end is always near."
                --Jim Morrison

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