politics vs. software

[Brian MacWhinney]

It's fine by me to chide people (Bralich or others) for doing "general
purpose" politics on FunkNet.  However, I feel that Phil Bralich (and Derek
Bickerton) should be welcome to tell us about their linguistic analysis
software.  I realize that some readers view these software announcements as
"ads".  But these are not "general purpose" software programs.  Rather they
are programs designed for a very small niche which many of us occupy.  On
the other hand, such announcements would more of a contribution if Bralich
and/or Bickerton could explain how the analyses produced by their programs
help illuminate interesting issues in the functional (as opposed to merely
formal) analysis of language and conversational processes.

--Brian MacWhinney