Back to Computational

[Andrew Carnie]

Hi all,

sorry for filling your mailboxes. I've forwarded Carl's question about
lexicalism to a colleague who is better equiped to answer it than me, so
hopefully you'll get a response to that question soon.

But returning to the question of why we(=MPers) refer to the combinatorics
as a "computation", another colleague -  who wishes to remain anonymous -
sent me the following insightful passage.
>
>  But isn't the term "computational system" a nickname for what
>>Chomsky actually calls CHL (HL subscripted).  And isn't that the point?
>>He's contrasting the computations (whatever they are) relevant to Human
>>Language (HL) with the interface systems, that might well have different
>>properties and do many other jobs.  The computations might be simple
>>combinatorics, but that's presented as a set of substantive hypotheses
>>(e.g. the Inclusiveness condition), not as the Minimalist Dream itself.

Best,

Andrew