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From: lee@uhccux.uhcc.hawaii.edu (Greg Lee)
Newsgroups: sci.lang,comp.lang.misc
Subject: Re: Syntactical *definition* of English
Message-ID: <2509@uhccux.uhcc.hawaii.edu>
Date: 20 Oct 88 03:34:08 GMT
References: <6946@orstcs.CS.ORST.EDU>
Organization: University of Hawaii
Lines: 12

From article <6946@orstcs.CS.ORST.EDU>, by budd@mist.cs.orst.edu (Tim Budd):
" You may remember that Context Free Languages were discovered by a
" Linguist, Noam Chomsky, not a computer scientist.  At the time (mid
" 1950's), there was great hope that a CFL, or at worst a CSL (context
" sensitive language) could be found that would describe English, and
" other such grammars developed for other natural languages.
" Such efforts more or less met with utter and complete defeat in the late 
" 50's and 60's.  Indeed so much so that some people working in understanding

Context free phrase structure grammar lives!  It's the basis of the
best current theory of syntax, GPSG -- Generalized Phrase Structure
Grammar.
			Greg, lee@uhccux.uhcc.hawaii.edu