The HPSG chapter in Carnie 2001

[Andrew Carnie]

Hi All,

As Andreas notes below, I indeed have a chapter on HPSG in my forthcoming
textbook, and I still welcome comments if anyone has any to send. I am
limited at this point to making corrections that won't affect the page
breaks (since the book has been typeset), but corrections of fact etc.
are very welcome.

The version that is up on the web is actually not the most recent version.
I am currently working on some revisions in response to some comments of
Emily Bender. But I'd be happy to hear comments about the older version
if people wnat to send them on. (Also comments about the LFG chapter are
welcome). I have to have the final revisions in by the middle of May. The
book will be published in December.

I'd like to comment on two things about Andreas's message. He comments
that I have largely ignored some colleague's comments. Let me state for
the record that I received *extremely* valuable comments from both Emily
Bender (actually two sets of comments from her) and Ivan Sag. I greatly
appreciated receiving those comments. They saved me from making some
truly atrocious mistakes, and I'm so glad they took the initiative and
sent them to me. I admit that I have chosen not to pursue some of their
more ideological points, and in fact, I admittedly present HPSG from the
perspective of a Minimalist, using minimalist rather than HPSG metaphors.
I do this for a couple of reasons. First is a pedagogical issue. The text
is aimed at introductory students, the first 12 chapters provide a fairly
mainstream MIT-centric (as Andreas puts it) view of the world. In this
context, presenting HPSG using the metaphors and language of minimalsim
makes sense, since it allows the chapter to form a coherent unit with
the rest of the book. Further it couches the theory in terms that the
students will already understand from the rest of the book. I know that
this introduces the danger of inaccuracies and puts a bias on the discussion
that probably, in all fairness shouldn't be there. But since I had a fairly
tight page limit, I couldn't really explore the theory in the depth required
to make clear the philosophical differences between an HPSG and a Minimalist
approach. The other reason I chose not to pursue some of the philosophical
and design issues that Emily and Ivan have pointed out to me, has to do
with the goal of the textbook. Some background: I originally had this
book entitled "Sentence Structure, a Generative Introduction". Blackwell
asked me to change the title to "Syntax" (so that it would fit in the
series that includes Saeed's "Semantics". I was a little daunted at
the prospect of presenting my view of Syntax as the entire discipline
(although many others have done so in the). This came up at the same time
as several of my students complained that they couldn't read important
articles written in the HPSG and LFG frameworks, because they weren't
familiar with the formalisms. So I decided to add two short chapters to
the end of the book that introduced, in a very sketchy way the technology
of HPSG and LFG. These chapters are NOT really meant to be used as serious
introductions to either of the theories. If someone really wants to work
in LFG or HPSG then they shouldn't use my chapters -- they should go and
look at the original literature, or some of the excellent textbooks out
there (Falk's and Bresnan's for LFG, Sag & Wasow's and Borsley's for HPSG).
My chapters are meant to be quick introductions to the formalisms of the
theories for people who are already working in MIT-frameworks but would
like to be familiar with the literature written in other frameworks. I
hope that if any of you look at my chapters you will keep this goal
in mind.

Since this thread centers around the question of the attention of HPSG
in the land of MIT-ers, I'd like to very briefly address the issue.
I'm the *FIRST* to admit that the citation practices of my Minimalist
colleages (and frequently me too) are not always up to snuff when it
comes to citing ideas from LFG and HPSG. But it is simply wrong to think
that, with certain zealots aside, HPSG and LFG are ignored by minimalists.
When I was a first year student at MIT, our introductory syntax class
contained brief but substantial components where we read papers written
in RG, LFG, GPSG. I teach a class here "theories of grammar" (facetiously
named "bad guys" by the students) that surveys some of the major functionalist
work, as well as LFG, HPSG and Categorial Grammar. I understand that
David Pesetsky is teaching a similar class at MIT these days. I might
add that a few months ago I spoke with David on the phone, and he
was enthousing about the possibility of implementing the precision and
formal rigour of HPSG style unification and feature structures into a
Minimalist theory of feature checking.

The rift between West and East coast syntax is really a sad one, and while
a fair amount of blame lies squarly on the shoulders of the aforementioned
chomskyan zealots, it isn't fair to tar us all with the same brush!

Best regards to you all,

Andrew




Reply-To:     Andreas Kathol <kathol at socrates.berkeley.edu>
 Sender:       The HPSG-L mailing list <hpsg-l at lists.stanford.edu>
 From:         Andreas Kathol <kathol at socrates.berkeley.edu>
 Subject:      Re: good news from generative grammarians
 Comments: To: "Ivan A. Sag" <sag at csli.stanford.edu>
 Comments: cc: Borsley R D <rborsley at essex.ac.uk>,
           HPSG <hpsg-l at lists.Stanford.EDU>
 In-Reply-To:  <200104261448.f3QEmb529064 at hypatia.Stanford.EDU> from "Ivan A.
               Sag" at Apr 26, 2001 07:48:37 AM
 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii

 There are chapters on LFG and HPSG in the forthcoming syntax textbook
 by Andrew Carnie
 (http://www.linguistlist.org/~carnie/Pages/textbook.html). It's pretty
 mainstream, MIT-centric in virtually all other respects.

 Since that book looks like it will be very popular for teaching
 beginning syntax, we may take advantage of the fact that there's still
 time for comments/suggestions before it goes into print. (Of course
 there's no guarantee that he'll actually work those reactions in; I've
 heard from one colleague whose comments on the HPSG part he seems to
 have ignored so far. With greater numbers that may change, though.)

   --A

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     O  O  O  O  O  		Andrew Carnie, Ph.D.
    <|\/|\/|\/|\/|>  		Asst. Professor of Linguistics
     =  =  =  =  =  		Department of Linguistics
    << << << << << 		Douglass 200E, University of Arizona
    ~~ ~~ ~~ ~~ ~~ 		Tucson, AZ 85721

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