Re: Corpora: NLP AND THE BEST THEORY OF SYNTAX

Steffan Corley (steffan@sharp.co.uk)
Wed, 18 Feb 1998 13:32:42 +0000

Philip A. Bralich, Ph.D. wrote:

> THE CONCLUSIONS I WILL DRAW FROM THIS ARE:
> 1) the theory that underlies the software at Ergo Linguistic Technologies
> is not only the best theory of syntax, but is the ONLY theory of syntax that
> has reached a sufficiently developed state to even attempt the standards
> described here.

Not that the "standards" are derived post hoc, based on the behaviour of a particular
parser, or anything like that.

> 2) those who do not mention this theory in their research proposals, grant
> applications, publications and so on are guilty of negligence (and could be
> sued if there are grants, contracts, jobs, or other such items of material
> value at stake and where the offerer of these jobs, grants, etc has reason
> to expect that the applicant is an expert in his field and is providing an
> accurate picture of the competitive environment).

What theory? As I understand it, the "theory" behind the parser is not published. It
would require greater abilities than I possess to write exposition about a theory
which is hidden from me.

> In addition, computational
> linguistics departments who do not mention these tools or use tools of this
> calibre are remiss in their duty to present the full range of available
> materials to their students.

I thought the idea of a course in Computational Linguistics was to train students in
writing custom language technology products (and in a thorough understanding of all
the flavors of linguistic theory), not in the use of a particular Windows program.

> 3) All current theories of syntax such as Chomsky's latest or even
> older versions of his theory HPSG, LFG, etc. should all be relegated to the
> scrap heap of "wannabe" systems until such time as they have been worked out
> in sufficient detail to allow the creation of programs that can execute their
> algorithms to the degree required by the above standards.

Because the study of syntactic competence is identical to the study of parsing
performance?

Steffan

--
Dr Steffan Corley
Research Scientist
Sharp Laboratories of Europe                      Tel +44 1865 747711
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Oxford OX4 4GA                              Email steffan@sharp.co.uk