[Corpora-List] Chomsky and computational linguistics

[Terry]

You seem to be saying that because one physicist has failed, all physicists
should give up. I don't think that follows. But it is perfectly possible for
a physicist to concede defeat without shame. Stephen Hawking provides an
example. And if you read a physicist like Brian Greene he does say
explicitly, for example, that Einstein failed in coming up with a unified
field theory. Must we wait until Chomsky dies before declaring his project a
failure? 

At any rate, I think it is time that people started saying this kind of
thing about Chomsky. He failed, but for whatever reasons of ego
preservation, he has never admitted it.

Terry

-----Original Message-----
From: Mike Maxwell [mailto:maxwell at umiacs.umd.edu] 
Sent: Saturday, July 28, 2007 1:06 AM
To: Terry
Subject: Re: [Corpora-List] Chomsky and computational linguistics

Terry wrote:
> I wonder if someone could clear up a small point. I understand that in
> Syntactic Structures, Chomsky set himself the task of generating all and
> only the grammatical sentences of a language.
> 
> Presumably, in the intervening 50 years or so since that work, he has
never
> succeeded. But has he ever said: "I have failed in this task"? Surely, at
a
> certain point, this is what a scientist would do. 

You could argue on those grounds that physicists should give up because 
in a century of trying, they haven't succeeded in finding the ultimate 
theory of the constituents of matter.

More to the point, one of the issues is that linguists are trying to 
reverse engineer nature.  When all you have is a black box, and you're 
trying to figure out what's inside it, it's not surprising if it turns 
out to be difficult.

This is going to date me :-(.  When I was about ten, I took apart a 
wristwatch, and basically figured out how it worked.  For my next 
project, I decided to take apart a TV to see how it worked.  Inside the 
TV were hundreds of pieces--things which I now know to have been 
resistors, capacitors, tubes, etc.  Have you ever taken a resistor or 
capacitor apart to see how it works?  Unlike a watch, there are no 
moving parts.  I was defeated.  Now at that point, I could have 
re-invented the theory of electricity, or I could have read a book.  I 
did the latter.  Unfortunately, God hasn't published His book on how the 
brain works.  So linguists are left trying to re-invent the theory of 
electricity, and it has not turned out to be simple.

On another level, "all and only" is the level of observational adequacy. 
  On the way to that, a number of puzzling properties have turned up 
(island phenomena, an apparent distinction between long-distance vs. 
local movement, preposition stranding vs. pied piping of prepositions, 
etc. etc.).  While it would be possible to handle some of these on an ad 
hoc basis (some might claim that the principles-and-parameters approach 
was just that), it would be interesting to know whether these facts 
might follow from some deeper theory.  This is the search for 
explanatory adequacy, and it is that search that Chomsky and others like 
him have chosen, leaving to others the task of observational adequacy 
(and maybe descriptive adequacy).

You can say that this search for deeper theories before we have an 
observationally adequate treatment is the wrong way to go, but in the 
end I think there's room for both.  And (possibly contrary to some other 
opinions expressed in this thread, if I understand them), I don't think 
Chomsky has argued that no one should work on observational adequacy. 
On the contrary, data collection and observationally adequate accounts 
of that data have served on several occasions as turning points in 
Chomsky-style linguistics.  One example of that is the discovery of 
parasitic gaps.  If I'm recalling correctly (and I'm probably not :-(, 
but I'm sure someone will correct me), Elisabeth Engdahl described them 
from a construction grammar perspective (which was more or less 
observationally adequate).  Chomsky's reaction was that these were 
fascinating, but rather than being a special construction that people 
learn (on the basis of extremely limited data), they ought to fall out 
from other principles (explanatory adequacy).

    Mike Maxwell
    CASL/ U MD


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