[Corpora-List] Is a complete grammar possible (beyond thecorpus itself)?

[Geoffrey Sampson]

I was interested in John Sowa's comment that people in 1970 might have
seen NLs as formal systems, "but nobody seriously believes it today".  I
wonder if that is really so?  I'm sure no-one calling himself or herself
a corpus linguist believes it, but we are still probably a minority of
all linguists interested in grammar.  My impression is that there remain
a great number of people out there who would describe themselves as
generative linguists and who do assume that NLs are formal systems
defined by finite sets of clearcut rules -- this assumption might be
something that makes many of them feel vaguely uncomfortable so that
they avoid thinking about it too deeply, as a clergyman might repress
doubts about the Virgin Birth or the like, but that is very different
from consciously rejecting the idea.  Am I out of date in supposing that
a large proportion of linguists remain generativists in that sense?

Geoffrey Sampson


............................................................
     Prof. Geoffrey Sampson  MA PhD MBCS CITP FHEA

     author of "The 'Language Instinct' Debate"

     Department of Informatics, University of Sussex
     Falmer, Brighton BN1 9QJ, England

     www.grsampson.net     +44 1273 678525
............................................................


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