good news from generative grammarians

[Carl Pollard]

Dear Elizabeth,

As a `die-hard generative guy' myself, I can't resist pointing out
that an HPSG **IS** a generative grammar, i.e. a formal specification
of a set of structural representations (Pollard 1999, `Strong
generative capacity in HPSG'). The same can be said of an LFG, and if
you regard a proof tree as a kind of structural representation, the
same can be said of a categorial grammar. On the other hand, with the
exception of Ed Stabler's formalization of GB theory in first-order
logic, I'm not aware of any manifestation of Chomskyan linguistics
after 1965 that could be characterized as `generative' in this sense.

To ask what the relationship between HPSG and generative grammar
is actually quite insulting to a practicioner of HPSG. It is like
asking a Buddhist what the relationship is between his/her faith
and a REAL religion (namely the questioner's).

As for `we presuppos[ing] all this stuff', that sounds very
impressive, but it is actually devoid of content absent any precise
specfication of what is being presupposed. It is pretentious and
intellectually dishonest. It also creates the false impression that it
doesn't matter what the details are, that all formalized theories are
equivalent, that the differences between them don't matter (because
`we' are too important to be bothered learning the math so we can tell
them apart). In fact, different formalized theories in science make
distinct empirical claims. By contrast, vague, imprecise, or
not-yet-worked-out `theories' don't make any empirical claims at
all. As Stabler (1992) put it: "It really is quite important to get
the details right. Otherwise the theory is just descriptively
inadequate." Geoff Pullum, writing in 1989, put it this way:

     It really is true that for most varieties of grammatical theory
     being practiced today, there is no way to determine from the
     published literature what counts as a sentence or a structural
     description (hence a language), or a rule or a grammar or a
     universal principle (notice that these are purely syntactic
     questions about the form of grammars); and also no way to
     determine what a rule or universal principle actually says about
     sentences, structural descriptions, languages, or grammars (these
     being semantic questions about the content of grammars).

I think things are actually WORSE now than when Pullum was writing.

>
He indicated a conception of the two frameworks
wherein one was just more abstract than the other, not
concerned with all the messy details, but essentially
compatible.
>>

You are using `abstract' here as a synonymn for `vague', `imprecise',
`not really worked out yet' or `sloppy'. An HPSG as currently
formalized is a theory (in the logical sense) stated in a certain
formal language (a kind of feature logic), and generates a set of
abstract feature structures. This is extremely abstract, in the same
sense that (say) abstract algebra is abstract. However, it is NOT
`abstract' in the sense in which you employed the word.  In your
usage, if instead of asserting that E = mc^2, Einstein had asserted
that `energy is in an appropriate licensing relationship with the mass
and the speed of light' that would have been more `abstract', and
therfore preferable because it didn't stoop to handling `messy
details.'

>
In what sense(s) are the two frameworks compatible?
Could there exist a mapping from any generative
grammar theory to a corresponding HPSG theory?
>>

You can't map between two theories unless you HAVE two theories.  An
HPSG actually IS a theory. What other `generative grammar' theory do
you want to try to map into it?

This is probably not the kind of reply you expected, but unfortunately
you pushed one of my buttons. Several of them, actually.

Regards,

Carl