SUO: *Date 26 Mar 2002 -- The Details Are In The Dev/Nul
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CM = Chris Menzel
JS = John Sowa
JS: I agree that Montague's system has had more influence among
professional linguists, but that is primarily because linguists
feel that a logician is more prestigious and worthy of a citation
than a mere computer programmer.
CM: Let's not be silly here, John. Wood's work may be just dandy,
but it was hardly a bias against programmers, and awe for logicians,
that caused Montague's work to get all the attention among linguists.
It it was because of Montague's great sensitivity to a wide range
of grammatical phenomena in natural language that had been entirely
overlooked by philosophers and logicians to that point, as well as
his wide knowledge of syntactic theory. And, of course, the paradigm
itself was extraordinarily fruitful.
JS: But much as I like lambda calculus, I believe that Montague's formalism
was a disaster that has done more to hinder wide spread use of logic
than it has done to promote it.
CM: Rubbish.
and, of course, when chris says "entirely overlooked
by philosophers and logicians to that point" what he
means is "entirely overlooked by the parochial school
of anglo-austrian atomic analysts who frumioused in
the period between 1900 and 1920". you see, they
had their own kind dev/nul in those days ...
ay, theirs the rubbish.
jon awbrey
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