Another view

[Philip A. Bralich, Ph.D.]

At 08:38 AM 1/10/97 -1000, Wallace Chafe wrote:
>
>As for parsing, where this discussion began, it's useful in illuminating
>some of the patterns that exist in the intermediate area between
>meanings and sounds.  But whether those patterns form an intact
>skeleton that can be studied apart from the meat attached to it has
>always seemed to me, at least, quite dubious.

I am sure this is true for medicine as well, studying a skeleton removed
from a body tells you very little about its interaction with the body, but
we are missing a pretty significant area of study if we do not have
orthopedics.  The usefulness and meaningfulness of a skeleton that has been
removed from its body is similar to the usefulness and meaningfulness of a
syntax that has been removed from its larger functional setting.

We can no more get rid of autonomous syntax or functional syntax than we can
wholistic medicine or orthopedics.  There is simply no debate here.  We as
linguists cannot ignore either one of these realities whether or not we
choose to specialize
in syntax (orthopedics) or wholistic medicine (functional grammar).


>In any case, if a machine
>were ever truly to understand something that was said to it, its
>understanding would have to be in cognitive, affective, and social
>terms--in terms of all facets of human experience--which lie quite
>beyond anything presently available in the computer world.

But from the point of view of machines understanding language.  We are 50 -
100 years away from that.  Let's not insist on jet engines when we still
haven't worked the bugs out of hot air balloons.  For now, we can get
computers to respond to significantly more lanugage by coupling a completely
worked syntactic analysis with the orthography.  This will take us a step
toward machine's understanding.

But first, let's do a full and proper analysis of small and medium sentences
before we proceed to other areas.  Everyone looking at parsing seems to want
to begin with machines that are as fully capable of language as are humans.
This is a mistake.  Let's take the state of the art as it is and begin
there.  Let's not insist that medicine cure aids before we work on cuts and
scratches and lets not insist on full understanding before we work on
parsers.  Let's also not be fooled by the state of the
art.  Insist on clear demonstrations of what is and is not possible with a
parser, and then let's see where we can go from there.

Phil Bralich


Philip A. Bralich, Ph.D.
President and CEO
Ergo Linguistic Technologies
2800 Woodlawn Drive, Suite 175
Honolulu, HI 96822

Tel: (808)539-3920
Fax: (808)5393924