Promoting interest in HPSG

[Lara Taylor]

Hi all -

I really like where this discussion is heading and just wanted to add my
own 2cents.  So far I have seen many excellent suggestions, and am very
excited about the prospects of having syntax conferences which have a
more balanced representation of different theoretical viewpoints.  In
light of that fact, I have mixed feelings about Ash's proposal.

On the one hand, I think it's an excellent suggestion to have a forum
where proponents of various non-derivational theories would have a chance
to interact.  There are many similarities across these theories and it
would be a natural fit for these communities to get together.

On the other hand, I am very concerned about the division that having
all these "exclusionary" conferences, which are focused on just one
theoretical framework, perpetuates - having a title like "NonDerivational
Approaches to Grammar" suggests that work using a derivational approach
is not welcome.  Having another conference which only focuses on certain
theories and not others once again reinforces the very divisions that
several people have pointed out as plaguing the field of syntax.

I can certainly have first-hand knowledge of Ash's point that:
>general syntax conferences tend to get swamped by transformational
>content, for a variety of institutional and demographic reasons

I was deeply disappointed last year, after serving on the abstracts
committee for WCCFL (held at UCSD), when none of the syntax abstracts
accepted to the conference used any theory other than Minimalism.  There
were many submissions that used other frameworks , and there were many
reviewers who are not biased against other theories of syntax (many of
them participate on this list).  In the end, however, I think that the
numbers were not in favor of any other outcome than that which we
got because the proportion of papers submitted using other theories and
the proportion of reviewers who use these theories was not equal with the
number of submissions and reviewers who only use GB/Minimalism.

So it seems like we have a numbers problem, and this is what we should be
addressing - how to foster more interest in HPSG?

Lack of education/exposure seems to be a big problem, in my mind, - many
students are only exposed to one theory and often it's a Chomskyan theory
- and then they become professors, and they work using the tools they
know.  Without a venue to unobtrusively be exposed to other
approaches without having to work in them oneself, these people never
really have to confront anything other than that which they are
familiar with.  Which just perpetuates the cycle.

The ideas that have been suggested - of creating conferences centered
around issues rather than formalisms - would create an opportunity to
increase everyone's exposure to all different theoretical approaches.

As Ash points out:
>I bet you would also get a lot of transformational
>syntacticians turning up to such an event, too, because it would offer
>them a broad perspective on what's going on outside their niche, without
>committing them to hearing a whole conference on a particular framework.

And I agree - but with a title like "NonDerivational Approaches to
Grammar", you only bring in people who are very motivated to go out of
their way to hear about such things, which is expecting a lot of people
who are just curious about but not necessarily committed to the idea of
non-derivational approaches to syntax.

With a title like, say, "Syntactic Typologies", you do not immediately
discount any one theory and thus you have the prospect of creating a
venue with a balanced representation of non-derivational theories while
also being able to bring in people who would not normally be exposed to
such approaches - potentially creating wider enthusiasm for
non-derivational approaches than existed previously.

So, that's my 2cents.

Lara
----------------
Lara M. Taylor
http://www.ling.ucsd.edu/~ltaylor