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From: jeff@aiai.ed.ac.uk (Jeff Dalton)
Subject: Re: What's innate? (Was Re: Artificial Neural Networks and Cognition
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Date: Mon, 16 Jan 1995 17:31:49 GMT
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In article <jqbD2D90I.KqH@netcom.com> jqb@netcom.com (Jim Balter) writes:
>In article <3f6tsf$mpu@mp.cs.niu.edu>, Neil Rickert <rickert@cs.niu.edu> wrote:
>>It is hard to be sure of what Chomsky is talking about, since he
>>periodically changes his mind.  I intended my comments to apply to
>>generative grammars and transformational grammars.
>
>I was in the new Borders bookstore in Westwood yesterday (a very scary store;
>I could distinctly hear the screams of my wallet) and saw a book called
>"Challenging Chomsky" that purports to be a response to the various criticisms
>leveled at his views.  Perhaps we need something like that in order to further
>this discussion, since it really doesn't seem to me that he is being 
>adequately represented here.

I've seen Challenging Chomsky.  It's written in a sort of amusing
style with a series of challenges to "the Master" (Chomsky as
teacher/sage).  I wasn't sure I could take page after page of
that.

>One observation I would like to make is that there appear to be a set of
>grammar rules that we have all learned not to violate, but that the
>"approximate grammar" from which we actually generate utterances is a
>subset of that.

I'm not sure it's a subset.  For one thing, the grammar rules I
learned not to violate don't cover as much of English as I actually
use.

-- jeff
