"Generative" serves them right

[Ash Asudeh]

Hi Carl

I wasn't so much objecting to the *content* of what you said.

On Mon, 30 Apr 2001, Carl Pollard wrote:

> > How about "Chomkyan" (my preferred term)?  "Transformational grammar"
> > is not quite right, because of nontransformational work like Koster's
> > and Brody's.  What is criterial is that it follow, or profess to
> > follow, in outline, at least, whatever Chomsky says is now the way to
> > go
>
> The preceding remark was in earnest. What is objectionable about it?

> >From another one:
> > Well, Sergio, this may sound a lot like things that were proposed in
> > LFG and GPSG 22 years ago, but there is an important scientific
> > difference.  They were not then proposed by Chomsky, and therefore
> > incapable in principle of being taken REALLY seriously, to say nothing
> > of being right. Now, from what you say, it sounds like the ideas may
> > have become right, and if so then surely Chomsky get the credit.
> > Surely Gerald Gazdar and Ron Kaplan shouldn't get any credit for
> > having these ideas when they were wrong! What sense would that make?
>
> The preceding remark was semifacetious, but intended (assuming the
> things Sergio said were factually correct) to call attention to
> > an unpleasant sociological  state of affairs.

I know it was semifacetious.

As for the factual correctness, according to my own understanding of the
facts, Probe is somewhat analogous to SLASH/functional uncertainty, but I
don't think it's exactly the same. For one thing, SLASH is registered at
every mother node above the gap. But Probe looks down the tree all at once
for the closest instance of what it needs. In other words, the dependency
is not registered on the head path the way SLASH is. This would
presumably make differing empirical predictions.

I think we have to be careful in asserting how exact the similarity is.

I for one welcome the recent participation of people like Liz and Andrew
Carnie and I would like to see an increase in such participation. Then we
could profitably discuss such similarities and differences between the
theories. The fact is, HPSG and related theories aren't as well known as
P&P and people will make elementary mistakes in trying to find out about
them. But shouldn't we be patient and give them a chance?

Best,
Ash