Tone of Discussion

[Philip A. Bralich, Ph.D.]

At 08:38 PM 1/2/97 -1000, Ron Kuzar wrote:
>Sorry to interfere, but the arrogant tone of discussion as initiated by
>Anne Sing is very annoying. I, for one, am very interested in trees (and
>other structural descriptions) and do not care at all if these trees can
>be afterwards utilized for commercial products. I do think that
>intellectual challenges may be launched and may benefit the thinking
>community, so could you please calm down and spare us the show.


These issues are more important than you letter seems to indicate.  Parsing
technology is an important area for the future of computational linguistics.
A proper understanding of syntax is crucial to this endeavor.  However, the
creation of tress alone is not enough.  The trees are meant to illustrate
generalizations about language based on a particular theory of syntax.  If
the trees cannot be used to manipulate sentences or label parts of the sentence
such as subjects and verbs, then the theory is not adequate.  The real test
is not the creation of trees.  The test is if these trees allow you to
analyze and manipulate language in a significant way thereby demonstrating the
efficacy of the theory.


As for the tone, I honestly don't see it to be much different than about 90%
of what
occurs on this or other lists.  Certainly the tone of your message seems
problematic.  It is, in many cases, necessary to make a point
in a world that is increasingly dominated by this sort of rhetoric.  My
participation in it is reluctant.  However, if I did not my arguments would be
lost.

Phil Bralich



Philip A. Bralich, Ph.D.
President and CEO
Ergo Linguistic Technologies
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Honolulu, HI 96822

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