[Corpora-List] RE : Chomsky and computational linguistics

[Rob Freeman]

For me the question of interest is the complexity of descriptions of
corpora. Is a complete grammar possible, or is the corpus of a language is
the most compact description of itself?

If Chomsky's work is relevant to that, why not talk about it?

Personally I could do without the "he was right"/"he was wrong" stuff too.
It buries the interesting issues and is meaningless in the abstract.

So let's keep it tight to the science/engineering issue.

But let's talk about it.

If the completeness of grammatical descriptions of corpora is not an
appropriate topic for the Corpora list, what is?

-Rob

On 8/31/07, Mike Maxwell <maxwell at umiacs.umd.edu> wrote:
>
> Cécile Yousfi wrote:
> > I'm a mere user of the BNC and I'm no Chomsky specialist, but I do enjoy
> > reading interesting discussion on the subject. So please go on
> > discussing the matter on the list.
> >
> > It's intellectually stimulating to have a genuine dialogue on a
> > theoretical subject, and to be confronted to different points of view.
>
> As one who posted on this subject a couple months ago (and probably
> posted too much :-), not to mention representing the strident minority
> on this list), I have to say that there's probably a better forum.  This
> list is, after all, about corpora; and while the discussion could have
> been about whether modeling corpora is about science or engineering, it
> tended to be more about whether Chomsky's approach had any validity, or
> whether he should have admitted defeat, or about other issues that (at
> least IMO) have less to do with corpora.
>
> I would welcome suggestions for a more appropriate forum.
> --
>         Mike Maxwell
>         maxwell at umiacs.umd.edu
>         "Theorists...have merely to lock themselves in a room
>         with a blackboard and coffee maker to conduct their business."
>         --Bruce A. Schumm, Deep Down Things
>
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> http://mailman.uib.no/listinfo/corpora
>
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