Since frameworks fill in "missing features" of the 95% php use cases.
Php is better to get things up and running, especially for web. Web frameworks make programming for web really easy, which is what php is all about; they are complements. Also, you add a web framework like Laravel for example, which makes it easy link your web framework and your cron tasks together things get really blurry. PHP becomes less of a language and more of scripting a framework to do what you what.
Well to be fair it is a pretty good framework for building shonky code.
Source: Am PHP Developer.
PHP never was a language, actually. There is no language description, only an interpreter. So I don't know if it's a framework, but a language it's not.
It's a scripting language in the classic sense -- limited such that you could not write a real application in it, but useful orchestrating activities delegated to it. And like all classic scripting languages it should be replaced with a real language embedded or exposed such as Clojure or Python. IMNSHO.
Not being a language doesn't mean you can't do meaningful things with it. My car is also not a language but a very valuable tool. Just like something is a car because it has 4 wheels, a motor and an enclosed space to sit in, in the same way something becomes a programming language by having a defined grammar. That's all. No reason to think I disregarded someone's favorite tool.