One Small Head -- Some Remarks on the use of 'Model' in Linguistics. AIM-157
- Title:
- One Small Head -- Some Remarks on the use of 'Model' in Linguistics. AIM-157
- Author:
- Wilks, Yorick
- Author (no Collectors):
- Wilks, Yorick
- Collector:
- Wilks, Yorick
- Description:
-
I argue that the present situation in formal linguistics, where much
new work is presented as being a "model of the brain", or of "human
language behavior", is an undesirable one. My reason for this
judgement is not the conservative (Braithwaitian) one that the
entities in question are not really models but theories. It is
rather that they are called models because they cannot be theories of
the brain at the present stage of brain research, and hence that the
use of "model" in this context is not so much aspirational as
resigned about our total ignorance of how the brain stores and
processes linguistic information. The reason such explanatory
entities cannot be theories is that this ignorance precludes any
"semantic ascent" up the theory; i.e., interpreting the items of the
theory in terms of observables. And the brain items, whatever they
may be, are not, as Chomsky has sometimes claimed, in the same
position as the "occult entities" of Physics like Gravitation; for
the brain items are not theoretically unreachable, merely unreached.
I then examine two possible alternate views of what linguistic
theories should be proffered as theories of: theories of sets of
sentences, and theories of a particular class of algorithms. I argue
for a form of the latter view, and that its acceptance would also
have the effect of making Computational Linguistics a central part of
Linguistics, rather than the poor relation it is now.
I examine a distinction among "linguistic models" proposed recently
by Mey. who was also arguing for the self-sufficiency of
Computational Linguistics, though as a "theory of performance". I
argue that his distinction is a bad one, partly for the reasons
developed above and partly because he attempts to tie it to Chomsky's
inscrutable competance-performance distinction. I conclude that the
independence and self-sufficiency of Computational Linguistics are
better supported by the arguments of this paper.
- Topic:
- Artificial intelligence
- Subject:
- Stanford Artificial Intelligence Laboratory and Memo (Stanford Artificial Intelligence Laboratory)
- Language:
- English
- Physical Description:
- 1 text file
- Publication Info:
- Stanford (Calif.) and cau
- Date:
- December 1971
- Place created:
- Stanford (Calif.)
- Imprint:
- Stanford (Calif.), December 1971
- Genre:
- memorandums
- Identifier:
- AIM-157
- Repository:
- Stanford University. Libraries. Department of Special Collections and University Archives
- Collection:
- Stanford Artificial Intelligence Laboratory records, 1963-2009
- Manuscript number:
- SC1041