[Corpora-List] Re: Chomsky

From: Shlomo Izre'el (izreel@post.tau.ac.il)
Date: Thu Oct 14 2004 - 18:00:14 MET DST

  • Next message: Ronald J. Craig: "Re: [Corpora-List] Chomsky"

    I don't have the original by Leech, but here is what I have in my files:
    "Any natural corpus will be skewed. Some sentences won't occur because
    they are obvious, others because they are false, still others because
    they are impolite. The corpus, if natural, will be so wildly skewed
    that the description would be no more than a mere list."
    (Chomsky in Leech, The State of the Art in Corpus Linguistics, 1991, p.
    8)
    Shlomo Izre'el

    On Oct 14, 2004, at 4:08 PM, Bob Knippen wrote:

    >
    >
    > Mª Belén Díez Bedmar wrote:
    >
    > > I'm looking for the exact bibliographical reference where we can
    > find
    > > Chomsky's idea that a corpus presents a language that is defective
    > or
    > > corrupted.
    >
    > To my knowledge, he never says any such thing.
    >
    > He does say, in several places (Syntactic Structures, 1957 comes to
    > mind), that corpora do not provide the kind of information about
    > linguistic competence that Linguistics ought to be after.
    >
    > In particular, he says that corpora do not provide information about
    > what is ungrammmatical, and he says something to the effect that
    > corpora, being finite, do not shed light on the infinite generative
    > capacity of language. (That is, a statistical model based on a
    > particular corpus is not a model of the language in general).
    >
    > I very much doubt he wrote that a corpus presents a language that is
    > defective or corrupted.
    >
    > Bob
    >
    >
    > --
    > Bob Knippen
    > Computer Science Department
    > 110 Volen Center
    > Mail Stop 018
    > Brandeis University
    > 415 South Street
    > Waltham, MA 02254-9110
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    > http://www.cs.brandeis.edu/~knippen
    >
    >
    >
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    Shlomo Izre'el
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