Chomsky on economy and HPSG

[Borsley R D]

I recently asked my coleague Andrew Radford if Chomsky still assumed
economy conditions (having noticed that the word 'economy' does not appear
in his recent LSA talk). Andrew decided to ask him and apparently also
asked him something about HPSG. This is how Chomsky responded:


'Which brings me to economy.  It's there, in full force, though
formulated in terms of efficient computation and the like.  One element
is gone: comparison of derivations.  But that's for good reasons.  It
did lead to inefficient computation, as was understood right at the
outset, and there have been various attempts to eliminate it, which
work, I think.

On HPSG, there's no way to compare, as far as I can see. HPSG is not
concerned with the same questions -- what I have always understood to be
the core questions of biology of language.  I did send you that LSA-LI
paper, didn't I?  Tries to clarify the point.  Also a couple of others
this last spring.'



Bob Borsley


--
Prof. Robert D. Borsley
Department of Language and Linguistics
University of Essex
Wivenhoe Park
COLCHESTER CO4 3SQ, UK

rborsley at essex.ac.uk
tel: +44 1206 873762
fax: +44 1206 872198
http://privatewww.essex.ac.uk/~rborsley