good news from generative grammarians

[Liz Coppock]

I apologize for my misuse of the term "generative
grammar;" I was taking up the usage from the title of
the email -- I presumed that "generative grammarians"
was being used to refer to the people who work in the
MIT/GB/P&P/MP tradition.  I understand that HPSG is a
generative grammar, and I am sorry to have caused you
insult.

Please understand that I was not espousing what my
professor said. I too was infuriated when I heard it
-- the "messy details" indeed!  Of course it's
ridiculous!  Nolo contendere.

The point is clear, and true:  in the MIT/GB/P&P/MP
framework, rarely has a testable prediction been made.
 Thus, there could be no mapping; MIT/GB/P&P/MP lacks
what could properly be called a "theory."

Please, I have a great admiration for you and your
work, and I beg you not to misunderstand me.


Elizabeth

--- Carl Pollard <pollard at ling.ohio-state.edu> wrote:
> 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


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