Re: Fw: Intro to natural language processing
Please take that description of NLP that was sent around with large
grains of salt!! It is pretty bad.
And I have to say this even given the fact that I agree with
it that functional approaches (in the linguistic sense) are
where the future is!! :-)
Makes it clear to me why I don't bother to subscribe
much to newsgroups: if that is the level of communciation,
well....
> 2) Functionalism (focus on language as a system of contrasting
> strings)
misses the point entirely: in what sense contrasting? It
has to be contrasting with respect to different
functions specified in terms of the cognitive and/or
social system: i.e., meanings construed very
broadly. Every kind of linguistics has to do
with contrasting strings... this is basic structure
from the past 60 years of linguistics, nothing
particularly generative.
> 4) Corpus (not so much a school of language, as a new resource, but
> not all schools accept that resource is meaningful; in particular
> Generativism traditionally thinks language cannot be learned from
> observations and must be innate.)
yeah well, anyone who is still bothering to argue against
using corpora is really back there in the debates
of 57/58/59 when Chomsky was making his name. It is
not really worth wasting breath on these days.
> What has been done
> in Linguistics is a guide here, but by no means and exhaustive guide.
> (Especially the way these theories have been developed in practice,
> rapidly moving away from their fundamental premises and occupying cosy
> niches where life is not too challenging.)
I wonder what little niche this person hangs out in. Not
one that I have seen much of in linguistics outside of
some notable and traditional exceptions....
> I've played a little implementing NLP systems in terms of the
> fundamental assumptions underlying Functionalism (focus on language as
> a system of contrasting strings). I think it is less wrong than the
> others. There's still plenty of scope left for error though.
Good for him. Perhaps he'd also like to see some of the
work of those who have been working in functionalist
linguistic traditions and computation for 20 years
or more. Then he can tell us how we are doing it wrong
(because our systems are not getting that much better
that fast either! :-) If you want to seriously get
into NLP, then starting points have to involve
*all* of the approaches mentioned. No one of those
by itself is in a position to deliver.
John B.