The Singularity and Universal Grammar...

[alex gross]

With all respect to everyone on FUNKNET, I would
like to call your attention to the following article on
AI from yesterday's  New York Times:

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/24/us/24bcstevens.html

I realize that I may be making myself even less likable
than heretofore, but I find many parallels between the
sense of this article and the recent history of linguistics.
After all, MT has usually been regarded as a branch of
AI and has intermittently been heralded as a major goal
of  linguistic research.

As I wrote eleven years ago under Reason 41 of my
44 Reasons piece:

41. The question of whether TGG is in fact a linguistic
theory at all or has rather become something far
closer to a religious cult. It certainly puts forward
what appear to be cult-like beliefs and specializes in
a form of compulsory indoctrination for all who wish
to join its inner precincts.

With best wishes to everyone!

alex

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Language design follows no particular pattern--it simply spreads out to fit 
the reality around it and serve the purposes of the people who use it.

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The principal purpose of language is not communication but to persuade 
ourselves that we know what we are talking about, when quite often we do 
not.

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