Example-based complexity-syntax and semantics as the production of ad-hoc arrangements of examples
Robert John Freeman · 2000
Computational linguists have traditionally sought to model language by finding underlying parameters which govern numerous examples. I describe a different approach which argues that numerous examples themselves, by virtue of their many possible arrangements, provide the only way to specify a sufficiently rich set of "parameters".Essentially I argue for a different relationship between example and parameter. With examples primary, and parameterizations of them secondary, the real "productions". Rather than representing a redundant complexity, examples should actually be seen as a simplification, a basis for the numerous arrangements of their "parameterizations".Another way of looking at it is to say I argue arrangements of examples, rather than simply revealing underlying parameters, represent in themselves an ignored resource for the modelling of syntactic, and semantic, complexity.I have implemented a small, working, "shallow parser" based on these ideas.