LINGUIST List 11.567

Tue Mar 14 2000

Sum: Chomsky & Statistics

Editor for this issue: Lydia Grebenyova <lydialinguistlist.org>

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  • Joseph Davis, Chomsky & Statistics

    Message 1: Chomsky & Statistics

     Date: Sat, 11 Mar 2000 08:09:35 -0800 (PST)
    From: Joseph Davis <jsphdvsyahoo.com>
    Subject: Chomsky & Statistics


    For Query: Linguist 11.375

    Linguists:

    Recently I posted a query concerning a reference I vaguely misremembered from Chomsky on the irrelevance of quantitative data in formal linguistics. Thanks to the following for responding: Sabine Bartsch, Stefan Thomas Gries, Mike Dowman, Barbara J. Luka, Leonor Santos, Joel Walters, V.J. Cook, Paul Chapin, Toby Ayer, and Vern M. Lindbad.

    Two citations in Syntactic Structures were mentioned: p. 17, and Ch. 2 para. 2.4. The citation I was actually seeking was found by Sabine Bartsch; it is: Halliday, M.A.K. 1991. "Corups Studies and Probabilistic Grammar" in Karin Aijmer and Bengt Altenberg (eds). _Corups Linguistics: Studies in Honour of Jan Svartvik._ London, New York: Longman. 30-43. It has to do with the sentences "I live in New York" and "I live in Dayton Ohio." The point was that frequency of use has nothing to do with grammaticality judgement.

    My own paper concerns the use of quantitative data not in formal linguistics, but in what has been called a "radically functional" "sign-based" approach, Columbia School. My thesis is that the use of quantitative validation of semantic hypotheses is legitimate but that typically the use of statistical inference is not (and is not necessary).

    Recent Columbia School books are:

    Contini-Morava, Ellen, and Barbara Sussman Goldberg (eds). 1995. _Meaning as Explanation: Advances in Linguistic Sign Theory_. Mouton de Gruyter.

    Huffman, Alan. 1997. _The Categories of Grammar: French lui and le._ John Benjamins.

    Reid, Wallis. 1991. _Verb and Noun Number in English: A Functional Explanation._ Longman.

    My paper is expected to appear in a volume being edited by Ricardo and Otheguy and Wallis Reid and to be published by Benjamins.

    Thanks to all who helped.

    Joseph Davis City College of New York