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From: srt@CS.UCLA.EDU
Newsgroups: comp.ai
Subject: Re: English grammar (was Re: In layman's terms.)
Message-ID: <6264@shemp.UCLA.EDU>
Date: Wed, 27-May-87 14:47:21 EDT
Article-I.D.: shemp.6264
Posted: Wed May 27 14:47:21 1987
Date-Received: Sat, 30-May-87 05:24:34 EDT
References: <13263@watmath.UUCP> <1116@houdi.UUCP> <529@iscuva.ISCS.COM>
Sender: root@CS.UCLA.EDU
Reply-To: srt@CS.UCLA.EDU (Scott "Dr. Pain" Turner)
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Organization: UCLA Computer Science Department
Lines: 32
Keywords: English, Backus-Naur Form, syntax.

In article <529@iscuva.ISCS.COM> randyg@iscuva.UUCP (Randy Gordon) writes:
>
>The "Young Turks" are the descendents of Schank's Conceptual Dependency
>theory, Sowa, Schank, etc. These generally treat semantics as secondary 
>to syntactics.
>

I think you probably mean "syntactics as secondary to semantics".

The important distinction is that the "Old School" believes that there
exists semantics-free language principles (Universal Grammar, the Language
Acquisition Device and so on) and as a consequence study language separate
from meaning (e.g., semantics).

The "Young Turks" study language as a (natural) representation for internal
concepts (Schank's CD is more a theory of concept representation than of
linguistics).  As a consequence, the research focus in this group is on
the processes involved in turning language into concepts and vice versa.
It has turned out that "semantics" (in the sense of word meanings and
concept manipulation) has proven much more important to correctly
translating from language to concepts than syntactic information.

Unlike the "Old School" that tries to study syntax in isolation, the "Young
Turks" recognize the importance of syntax and use syntactic information
whenever appropriate.  The apparent bias arises because of the actual
relative importance of semantics vs. syntax, not because of any research
methodology.
 
  Scott R. Turner
  UCLA Computer Science     "But If I Graduate,
  Domain: srt@ucla.cs.edu       I'll Have to Work for a Living"
  UUCP:  ...!{cepu,ihnp4,trwspp,ucbvax}!ucla-cs!srt