rwojcik@bcsaic.UUCP (Rick Wojcik) (07/09/88)
In article <1342@crete.cs.glasgow.ac.uk> gilbert@cs.glasgow.ac.uk (Gilbert Cockton) writes: >... but I don't know if a non-computational linguist >working on semantics and pragmatics would call it advanced research work. Implicit in this statement is the mistaken view that non-computational linguists get to define 'advanced' research work. Computational linguists often are fully qualified theoretical linguists, not just computer scientists with a few courses in linguistics. But the concerns of the computational linguist are not always compatible with those of 'pure' theoretical linguists. Since many linguistic theories do not attempt to model the processes by which we produce and comprehend language (i.e. they concern themselves primarily with the validation of grammatical form), they fail to address issues that computational linguists are forced to ponder. For example, non-computational linguists have largely ignored the questions of how one disambiguates language or perceives meaning in ill-formed phrases. The question is not just how many possible meanings a form can express, but how the listener arrives at the correct meaning in a given context. Given that theoretical linguists seldom have to demonstrate concrete effects of their research, it is difficult to get them to focus on these issues. You should regard theoretical linguists as striving for a partial theory of language, whereas computational linguists have to go after the whole thing. A major limitation for computational linguists is that they must confine themselves to operations that they can get a machine to perform. -- Rick Wojcik csnet: rwojcik@boeing.com uucp: uw-beaver!ssc-vax!bcsaic!rwojcik address: P.O. Box 24346, MS 7L-64, Seattle, WA 98124-0346 phone: 206-865-3844