LINGUIST List 5.41

Tue 11 Jan 1994

Disc: Internal/External Evidence

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1. , Re: 5.6 Internal/external evidence

Message 1: Re: 5.6 Internal/external evidence

Alexis's critique of language games as evidence struck a chord. Too
many of us, in reaction to the traditional reluctance to accept anything
but "linguistic " (read "distributional") evidence, run to the opposite
extreme: any other kind of evidence is decisive. Don Churma's
anecdote about prenasalization is indicative of this sort of response.
But non-distributional data should not be sacred either. Come to think
of it, nothing is sacred (the curse of the postmodern world)!!