Promoting interest in HPSG

[Shalom Lappin]

I agree with Rob on this point. At this risk of sounding heretical, I must
confess that for some time now it has seemed to me that the well entrenched
practise in linguistics of organizing conferences around theoretical
paradigms rather than research issues or subfields is something of an anomaly
in the sciences. Theories are instruments of description and explanation
rather objects of investigation. While it certainly make sense for researchers
working within a given theory to meet in order to discuss the articulation
and development of that theory, one would hope that, as the field matures, the
emphasis will increasingly shift to conferences devoted to particular
research themes, with alternative theoretical perspectives represented
seamlessly as part of the development of work on these themes. Segregating
scientific meetings according to theoretical allegiances breeds mutually
exclusive schools which disregard much of the work done in competing
frameworks. This is the mark of an immature discipline which has yet to
develop a common set of assumptions, methods, and results. We should be
aiming to move linguistics beyond this phase.
                         Shalom Lappin
                         Dept. of Computer Science
                         King's College, London
                         lappin at dcs.kcl.ac.uk


On Thu, Jun 24, 2004 at 03:19:51PM -0700, Rob Malouf wrote:
> At the risk of really stepping in it...  is it obvious that we ought to
> be promoting interest in the HPSG conference?  Maybe the drop-off in
> submissions is sign that we don't really need an HPSG conference *and* a
> formal grammar conference *and* a construction grammar conference *and*
> an LFG conference *and* a dozen other theoretical and computational
> linguistics conferences.  Maybe preserving the HPSG conference as such
> isn't the most forward-thinking way for the standing committee to foster
> a research community that goes beyond the current style of "name brand"
> syntax.  I don't really know what would be better (perhaps organizing
> conferences around particular descriptive challenges?), but I think we
> should open this discussion up to a broader range of options.
> --
> Rob Malouf <rmalouf at mail.sdsu.edu>
> Department of Linguistics and Oriental Languages
> San Diego State University
>
>