[Corpora-List] ad-hoc generalization and meaning

[Paula Newman]

Rob,

Re:
RF> does the study of language have to be divided up in the ways you describe?

Of  course not.  I was providing a framework in which to ask a question, namely, what is the purpose of your  proposal? 
 Is it to further the study of language?  To develop methods of implementing NL processors?  
To form the basis for new formalisms useful in both contexts? To develop new types of corpus annotation? Or?

And that was just to get at (i.e. pin down) what you are actually suggesting.  

Perhaps another way of getting there is via another question: 
given that you have an idea in mind that you seem to think is new, how would you pursue it? 

That words, meanings, and the contexts in which they occur are interdependent is well known.  
What new approach are you proposing to deal with that fact?  People have been struggling over it for
years, on both theoretical and practical levels?

RB>Your comments conjure in me a rather odd picture of science where 
> we assume everything which can be known, is already know, and it 
> only remains to select what we want to do with that knowledge. 

I can't imagine how you conjured up that picture.

RB> I think the idea of "informal grammar" is a muddle too. I don't think grammar is "informal", I think it is "necessarily incomplete".

OK, I thought it was your term.  But, and as you have been advised many times, everyone knows the latter.
The observation that  "Any grammar leaks" is a very old one.  I used to think it was by Jane Robinson, but I've recently seen
an attribution to Sapir.

Paula
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