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You are right - but most people have understood the question to be: "Which came first, kata or the techniques/combinations that make up kata".

Breathing and "supplemental" skills are often taught as single moves or short combinations - for example "qi gong".

On the other hand, each move in a taiji form is a "qi gong"...

In other words, you don't need a long sequence which strings together different techniques for those techniques to exist independently.

In my opinion it's clear the techniques came first, then they were "packaged" into sequences for ease of remembering/teaching/categorisation, practise in a dynamic/flowing environment (transition from one technique to another) etc.

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What I was originally getting at was: take crane style, someone watched the crane and mimicked its movements in an effort to try to capture the essence and behavior of the crane. A "form" was born from this process, and the movements were applied to a combat situation which produced possible responses to situations, attacks, etc. There is more than just fighting applications in the form which would suggest that the form was not created merely for fighting purposes, but that the fighting applications came as a result of taking the form and applying it to fighting situations. Kind of a process of discovery. I think a good point was made that we don't really know the original applications to the techs found in the kata, so we are indeed retrofitting them or at least reinterpreting them and giving them our own little spin.

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