Prevailing approaches do not have a computational lexicon

[Andrew Carnie]

Hi All,

If you haven't all read it yet, take a gander at Elan Dresher's commentary
on Lappin, Levine & Johnson in the recent issue of Glot. (Available
through Linguist List Plus if you are a subscriber).

Your local neighborhood post-modernist hack.

Andrew






On Sun, 22 Sep 2002, Robert Levine wrote:

> Ash---My own sense that `computational' is used as a systematic,
> rhetorically motivated malapropism for `combinatorial' in the
> minimalist litany. As Shalom points out, the MP literature is bare of
> actual computations, in the sense of an explicit set of steps applying
> to well-defined input and yielding a fully specified
> output. `Computational' is used by minimalists---just as Sokal and
> Bricmont say, in their wonderful book Fashionable Nonsense, about the
> abuse of of genuine science by postmodernist hacks---to give a `veneer
> of rigor to their own discourse'. But really, all they mean is
> combinatorics, some system for putting elements together to generate
> larger elements. So far as I can tell, nothing else is intended, at
> least extensionally...
>
> cheers[???],
>
> Bob
>
>
>
> > Hi Ash,
> >    I wonder why you are surprised by this phenomenon. There are two points
> >    worth noting here. (i) It is very common for theoretical linguists
> >    working in the minimalist framework to follow Chomsky in referring to
> >    syntaxas "the computational component" of the grammar while assiduously avoiding
> > clear specification of the computational properties of the syntactic
> > operations that they posit as elements of this component. I have found
> > that when pressed on this and related issues many minimalists tend to
> > retreat to the claim that they are only concerned with a theory of
> > competence, and so they are not responsible for a computational account of
> > the grammar, which they assign to impelmentation or performance. The
> > question remains, then, in what sense they are describing syntax as a
> > computational component of the grammar. (ii) The widespread lack of
> > awareness (indifference?) to work going on in other theoretical frameworks
> > and to research in computational linguistics is legion, and it has been
> > noted many times. From my own experience in these matters I have found
> > that regardless of how often one raises these questions, it has little
> > impact on working practise in large areas of the field. It is probably
> > best simply to set them aside in order avoid pointless irritation and to
> > use the time to pursue productive research. Regards.                               Shalom
>

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