[Corpora-List] Chomsky and computationnel linguistics

[Rich Cooper]

John,

Thanks for yet another excellent reference!  I notice that Wierzbicka's
NSM still motivates her:

"The universal human concepts which can be found in every language in the
form of specific, readily identifiable lexical units (words and wordlike
elements), constitute the core of a language's lexicon - a core on the basis
of which all other, more complex, meanings can be built, and through which
all other, more complex, meanings can be understood.  Within the NSM theory,
the sixty or so empirically identified universal human concepts are regarded
as each language's set of 'semantic primes' - unanalyzable elements of
meaning which underlie a given language's entire semantic system and which
are the cornerstone of its entire lexicon. ..."

In effect, Wierzbicka is saying that she believes the core primes are
sufficient to establish the meaning of all other words.  This is still a
difference between her beliefs and yours, as we discussed in earlier
messages.  Do you still feel that specific experiences are needed before a
person can fully understand more subtle words and phrases?  I'm undecided on
this issue.  I would like to find a way to interpret some nontrivial portion
of daily language behaviors in a mechanical way through a very limited set
of primitives, but I am swayed by your arguments that people have vivid
experiences which define less primitive words and phrases in their own
contexts, not in the context of primes.  

-Rich


-----Original Message-----
From: owner-corpora at lists.uib.no [mailto:owner-corpora at lists.uib.no] On
Behalf Of John F. Sowa
Sent: Monday, July 02, 2007 8:13 PM
To: Ramesh Krishnamurthy
Cc: corpora at uib.no
Subject: Re: [Corpora-List] Chomsky and computationnel linguistics

It is truly sad when a man who had taught us all a great deal at
one time long ago has walled himself off from any input that might
raise questions he had decided to ignore five decades ago.

R. Krishnamurthy> It seems odd to link "corpora" and "Chomsky" in
 > the same sentence.
 >
 > In a recent article...
 >> Joszef Andor
 >> The master and his performance: An interview with Noam Chomsky
 >> Intercultural Pragmatics 1-1 (2004), 93-111
 >
 >...Chomsky said:
 >> (p 97) Corpus linguistics doesn't mean anything. It's like saying
 >> suppose a physicist decides, suppose physics and chemistry decide
 >> that instead of relying on experiments, what they're going to do
 >> is take videotapes of things happening in the world and they'll
 >> collect huge videotapes of everything that's happening and from
 >> that maybe they'll come up with some generalizations or insights.

Actually, they do that, but they do that "in addition to", not
"instead of".  In every experiment, they record (sometimes with video)
what happens.  For fields on a gigantic scale, such as astronomy,
meteorology, or plate tectonics, "instead of" is the only thing that
is humanly possible.  And those fields have made enormous progress
in the past 50 years.

Anna Wierzbicka commented on another pronouncement by Chomsky in
that same interview:

 > In a recent extended interview for the journal "Intercultural
 > Pragmatics", Noam Chomsky (in Andor 2004) declared that next to
 > nothing is currently known about the mental lexicon. Since
 > evidently all that falls into Chomsky's field of vision is the
 > work done within the generative paradigm, his conclusion is not
 > surprising: the sterility of the generative approach to semantics
 > in general and to the mental lexicon in particular must be evident
 > to anyone, friend or foe, who has followed the fortunes of the
 > generative enterprise. As this article shows, however, outside
 > the Chomskyan paradigm a great deal has come to be known about
 > the mental lexicon.

See http://www.ali2006.une.edu.au/Wierzbicka_Mental_lexicon.pdf

As an example of what Chomsky could have become, I recall an interview
with the physicist Eugene Wigner in _Physics Today_ in the early 1980s.
At that time, Wigner was approaching 80, but he was still publishing
research articles in physics.  The interviewer asked how he was able
to continue making contributions to a field that is usually considered
the province of much younger researchers.  Wigner replied that he had
his own range of insights, which he continued to develop over a long
period with fruitful results.  But, he added, he was careful not to
make discouraging remarks about younger researchers because they might
have fruitful insights into areas that were outside his expertise.

The "first rule of reason" by C. S. Peirce was "Do not block the way
of inquiry."  Wigner observed that rule, but Chomsky didn't.

John Sowa



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