Language as Program: A Reassessment of the Nature of Descriptive Linguistics  

Oleh:

Fawcett, Robin P.

Jenis: Article from Journal - ilmiah internasional
Dalam koleksi: Language Sciences (Full Text) vol. 14 no. 4 (1992), page 623-657,.
Fulltext: 14_04_Fawcett.pdf (2.28MB)

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Perpustakaan PKBB Nomor Panggil: 405/LAS/c Non-tandon: tidak ada Tandon: 1

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The purpose of this paper is to challenge one of the basic tenets of linguistics. The traditional view is that it is the business of linguists to describe language and languages-and/or to theorize about it and them. It is essentially a view of language as an object. While I remain solidly based in linguistics, I draw here on my experience in natural language processing (i.e. of putting English in computers as part of a model of a communicating mind) as I advocate the view that it is more insightful to view language not as object, but as procedure, as process, as program. Note that ‘program’ has no final ‘me’ to signify the sense of ‘computer program’. I invite you to come with me on an exploration of what is involved when someone produces (‘generates’) a sentence, to show why I advocate a model of language that is not static, but dynamic. The model is also, I shall argue, essentially generative (in the sense of ‘productive’) rather than interpretive. Thus a program whose essential design is as it is to enable it to run in one direction-i.e. to turn meanings into sounds-is consulted as the person trying to understand a text attempts the converse task. This is not just ‘to turn sound into meaning’, but to turn the performer’s sounds back into the performer’s meanings. Hence the logical priority of generation over interpretation. In this new view of language as program, it is no longer possible to draw a clear line between the material of linguistics and the algorithms that determine how we choose between linguistic options; one needs a more complete framework, which is inevitably also more complex, e.g. as described here.

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