Dependency, Postsemantics, Paradigm

Abstract

The Chomskyan revolution, which replaced the old paradigm that dictated the taxonomic study of natural language with another that proposed a theoretical methodology (of ‘hidden laws’, in Searle’s phrase) for interpreting the data accumulated by that study, has undoubtedly changed forever man’s view of his language and directly or indirectly occasioned much of the theory and research I have been discussing. That paradigm has stirred controversies that extend, like Chomsky’s speculations, far beyond questions about the details of transformational grammar. But, as has been seen, it has serious inadequacies. They raise important questions about the MLM metaphor and encourage speculation about the post-Chomskyan paradigm, which increasingly will be integrated with AI theory and tested by AI research.