Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!uunet!wuarchive!rex!ames!uhccux!lee
From: lee@uhccux.uhcc.hawaii.edu (Greg Lee)
Newsgroups: comp.ai
Subject: Re: The Chinese Room and the Babylonian Bureaucracy
Message-ID: <6164@uhccux.uhcc.hawaii.edu>
Date: 14 Jan 90 15:51:48 GMT
References: <8527@cbnewsm.ATT.COM>
Distribution: usa
Organization: University of Hawaii
Lines: 24

From article <8527@cbnewsm.ATT.COM>, by ele@cbnewsm.ATT.COM (eugene.l.edmon):
>...
>Well let's see if this works.  I make up a new word, say acadedementia,
>and tell you what it means. You then know all you need to use
>the word correctly. However, if I instead tell you not the meaning
>but the syntactic rules associated with use of the word,
>you will not be able to use it correctly.

It doesn't work.  Whether syntactic rules can be sufficient to
characterize correct usage is under discussion.  In your scenario,
you presuppose that the answer is that they cannot.  Consequently,
as an argument that syntactic rules are not sufficient, this
begs the question.

A way of phrasing the central difficulty is: Given an incorrect
usage, what principles allow one to decide whether the violation
is syntactic or semantic in nature?  And since rules of usage
are typically phrased in terms of co-occurrence of items of
certain categories (tokens of certain types), this leads to the
question: What is the difference between a syntactic category
and a semantic category?  Personally, I don't think there are
any answers to these questions.

				Greg, lee@uhccux.uhcc.hawaii.edu