Stefan Havenstein (batman@cs.tu-berlin.de)
Wed, 10 Dec 1997 11:48:31 +0100
Hi anybody, I neither have any important status in this community, nor did I study Aristotle's Rhetorics. But I think this goes for 90% of the members of this mailing list, so maybe there is somebody out there who agrees with me... I think what goes on here is a super-high-level image-cultivation flame-war, performed by our very Gods to prove their rhetorical talent, their unsurpassable intellect, and their sparkling wit. And their wrath: their wrath at those incredibly disrespectful reviewers, who dared to reject their abstracts. What a cheek! But seriously: Maybe we would respect our Gods even more if they applied their abilities to some discussion of linguistic topics, e.g. how their theories relate to one another. I'm no CG fan, but I think the way CG is still treated by the rest of the world is fairly strange (I know that this was meant as some kind of joke, but Tibor Kiss' statement "and I will only participate to ask after each CG-talk what this slash is actually standing for (hierarchical file system or what)" is somehow typical...). Regards, Stefan Havenstein (student, Technical University Berlin) Tibor Kiss wrote: > > Hi everybody, > > Ivan Sag has surely studied Aristotle's Rhetorics. I think that it is > pretty misleading to turn my comments and Karel's illustration into a > discussion about the perilious rafts of being reviewed. This aspect is > definitely orthogonal to my initial concern. > > I am not concerned at all about being reviewed by Categorial > Grammarians, let alone Formal Grammarians. I am just concerned about > explaining the Head Feature Principle and other highly subtle, > elaborated and specialized stuff to them, such as the idea that the > syntactic head determines the category of the phrase, or that lexical > rules belong to the lexicon and should not be applied in syntax, or even > the almost hyper-real idea that just one syntactic analysis suffices > for a given sentence. > > As for Bob's comment about there being too many conferences: I myself > would not be bewildered, let alone upset, if Formal Grammar would have > disappeared from the conference schedules. To me, the whole story seems > to be another instance of HPSG pampering little known and > out-of-left-field frameworks (bally-hoo, Categorial Grammarians). > > Finally, applause to Carl: Albeit one of his abstracts being rejected > for HPSG'97, he remarked correctly that involving a broader audience > sometimes makes it easier to live with a decision. > > And more than finally: As mentioned on various occasions, I don't think > that it is our task to form an anti-MP-league. Instead, we should > concentrate on writing better and more influential papers which would > convince more people from neighboring areas to join HPSG (instead of GB, > cf. Chierchia's book) instead of re-inventing crucial HPSG-ideas (cf. > Bouchard's recent book). (Fn.: Compare e.g. Reinhart's and Reuland's > (1993) reaction to Pollard/Sag 1992 to see that this is actually > possible without allies from CG.) > > One way of achieving this goal is having the opportunity to talk to and > discuss with people who really understand what we are doing. HPSG'98 > would have been such an opportunity, F... 98 is not, and I will only > participate to ask after each CG-talk what this slash is actually > standing for (hierarchical file system or what). > > Nay, nay, nay, > > Tibor > > =============================================================== > PD Dr. Tibor Kiss, IBM Germany WT, Vangerowstr. 18 > D-69115 Heidelberg, +49-6221-594483 -3400 (fax) > Alles was man sagen kann, kann man klar sagen. > ===============================================================
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