"Generative" serves them right

[sergi balari]

Dear colleagues,

I've been following this recent discussion about the use of the term
'generative' and, finally, I decided to abandon for a while my Peninsular
isolation just to disagree a bit with everybody. Even with good, old, Homeric
Karel, although, this time, a bit less than usual.

Being myself born as a dissident (and pehaps still living as one), I find
these discussions about 'labels' a bit Byzantine. I sounds me too much as if
the matter reduced to vindicate who is the keeper of the real truth and to
flagwaving, trying to show whose is bluer or reder or brighter. Frankly, I
don't see this is taking us anywhere, apart from being very happy anytime some
eminent MIT professor is magnanimous enough to make some reference to other
frameworks in a footnote.

To me, the problem is of a much deeper nature. It's a question of intellectual
honesty and, for example, I find extremely important what Shalom Lappin, Bob
Levine and David Johnson are doing by showing how uncritical and oblivious is
much of the research that is being carried out in linguistics. If Chomsky has
reinvented SLASH in his Minimalist Inquiries (he calls it a 'probe'), we want
this acknowledged in print (and, preferably, not in a footnote). This is the
ideal situation, unfortunately not one most of us will be able to see in the
near future, but one I believe should concern everyone.

So, if they are happy with their 'generative' flag, let's them keep it and
play with it, while trying to build something different. Flags are boring,
science and dialectics (sorry, Karel) is (are?) fun.

Have a nice Spring.

Sergio



Karel Oliva wrote:

> Hi,
>
> being almost born as a dissident (beware, youngsters: this is *not* a kind
> of a toothpaste !), I have to disagree with the general opinion, as usual
>
> :-)
>
> Liz, you have nothing to apologize for.
>
> To me, "generative" is an *extremely felicitous* term for the kind of
> grammar as GB/P&P/MP and the like. I guess that even Homer, had he
> mentioned GB in Illias & Odyssey, would have sticked to this epitheton
> constans, as his did with the "light-footed Achilleus" or "thunder-reigning
> Zeus" (sorry for the miserable translations, I indeed did not read these
> works in English).
>
> The point about GB/MP and the like is that (in the above epic sense) they
> indeed very much deserve the attribute "generative" because they are -  at
> least as long as they rely on transformations, which is the rule -
> GENERATIVE-ONLY. It is their distinguishing property. In the sense that one
> cannot really PARSE with them, definitely not if one takes this task
> seriously (yes, I do know there were attempts by Barton, Weinberg, Millies
> and others, but I also do know they all were not really successful to put
> it mildly - correct me if I am mistaken, at best by pointing out a working
> GB/MP wide-coverage parser). That is, something like generating one by one
> all possible strings and  checking each time whether the string created is
> the one to be parsed, is not a serious approach to parsing to me.
>
> However, the story has *more* to it than that it is difficult at best (and
> I would say imposible) to work out a reasonable GB/MP parser.
> The true point is that human beings not only generate language, but,
> astonishing as this fact seems to be for  many GB proponents, human beings
> also tend to understand it. And while such theories as HPSG, GPG, LFG, ...
> describe the language in such a way that the distinction between language
> production and language comprehension plays no (major) role, GB/P&P/MP
> mainstream is oriented on production (generation) only, while it is
> difficult even to think about modelling understanding. For those who do not
> know the old-established fact: the point is not that one cannot invert a
> transformation creating  from an "input" structure" an "output" one -
> indeed this can be done, provided one has the "output" structure. The
> trouble is we do not have any structure when we parse, we have just the
> string.
>
> In this sense, GB/P&P/MP cannot be adequate theories of human language -  a
> GB/P&P/MP description of a language is only a "generative" grammar, but it
> isn't and cannot be a real grammar.
> In this sense, the attribute "generative" describes GB/P&P/MP-based
> grammars absolutely correctly, distinguishing them from grammars which can
> do more.
>
> k

--
_______________________________________________
Sergio Balari Ravera
Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona
Àrea de Lingüística General
Departament de Filologia Catalana
Facultat de Lletres, Edifici B
E-09193 Bellaterra (Barcelona)
Spain
Phone: +34 935 812 350 Fax: +34 935 812 782
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