Re: Interview with Manin ~~~> The Wand Chooses The Wizard

Re: Interview with Manin ~~~> The Wand Chooses The Wizard
At: http://golem.ph.utexas.edu/category/2009/11/interview_with_manin.html

Questions about the ontological status of grammatical categories and structural levels
are as commonplace in linguistics as questions about the ontological status of variables
in logic and mathematics.  I can't place the interview that Minhyong Kim mentions right
offhand, but it seems like a fairly characteristic remark.  The subject arose recently
on a thread in the n-Forum:

* http://www.math.ntnu.no/~stacey/Vanilla/nForum/comments.php?DiscussionID=179

where I cited this early statement from Chomsky:

| In linguistic theory, we face the problem of constructing this system
| of levels in an abstract manner, in such a way that a simple grammar
| will result when this complex of abstract structures is given an
| interpretation in actual linguistic material.
|
| Since higher levels are not literally constructed out of lower ones,
| in this view, we are quite free to construct levels of a high degree
| of interdependence, i.e., with heavy conditions of compatibility
| between them, without the fear of circularity that has been so
| widely stressed in recent theoretical work in linguistics.
|
| (Chomsky, 1975, p. 100).
|
| Chomsky, N. (1975), ''The Logical Structure of Linguistic Theory'', University of
| Chicago Press, Chicago, IL.  Based on a widely circulated manuscript dated 1955.

Jon Awbrey, 09 Nov 2009, 1:56 PM
http://golem.ph.utexas.edu/category/2009/11/interview_with_manin.html#c029023

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