Subject: linguistic theory and computational linguistics

bod , rens ( university of amsterdam ) ; beyond grammar : an experience-based theory of language ; isbn : 1-57586 - 150 - x ( paper ) , 1-57586 - 151 - 8 ( cloth ) ; 184 pp . csli publications 1998 : http : / / csli-www . stanford . edu / publications / email : pubs @ roslin . stanford . edu . during the last few years , a new approach to linguistic analysis has started to emerge . this approach , which has come to be known under various labels such as " data-oriented parsing " , " corpus-based interpretation " and " treebank grammar " , embodies the assumption that human language comprehension and production works with representations of concrete past language experiences rather than with abstract grammatical rules . the models that instantiate this approach operate by decomposing the given representations into fragments and recomposing those pieces to analyze ( infinitely many ) new utterances . a probability model is used to choose from the collection of different fragments those that make up the most appropriate representation of an utterance . this book shows how this general approach can apply to various kinds of linguistic representations , ranging from phrase-structure trees , compositional semantic representations , dialogue representations , and lexical-functional grammar representations . the resulting models are utilized for the automatic acquisition of language , for harnessing ambiguity and for processing of spoken dialogue . experiments with these models suggest that the productive units of natural language cannot be defined by a minimal set of rules or principles , but need to be defined by a large , redundant set of previously experienced structures . bod argues that this outcome has important consequences for linguistic theory , leading to an entirely new view of the nature of linguistic competence and the relationship between linguistic theory and models of performance . * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * csli publications ventura hall stanford university stanford , ca 94305-4115 telephone ( 650 ) 723-1839 fax ( 650 ) 725-2166 http : / / csli-publications . stanford . edu /
