Re: "Difficult" clauses

On May 15, 2007, at 11:23 AM, taliesin the storyteller wrote:
> HPSG has a real problem with free word order languages, I much
> prefer LFG for that.
True, but undergrasuate me would have been happy with a formalism
that even _had_ a parsing model.

> We did HPSG for Syntax 2 and LFG for Typology and Universals, I
> just wish there had been a framework-free class...
Not possible, I think -- even "no perspective" is a perspective (to
the extent that it's not an illusion).

ObConlang: This is one of the problems with the "Objective" language
project that people often come up with, a la Heinlein's (speedtalk?)
and Delaney's  Babel-17...

> Classic :) The same sentence was used in one of my classes:
> first year, waterfall, second year: "forget that you ever heard
> about waterfall, here's UML". I didn't bother with the second
> year.
It's terrible pedagogy. You can teach something and say "this model
has problems, but it's the starting point to understand the field as
a whole, and the terminology everyone uses is based on this theory.
We'll talk sometimes about what the problems are, but we will have to
learn the basic theory, even though we will eventually move beyond it."

of course, one rarely _needs_ to take a semester on something like
that. My guess is that there were academic politics in play that I
was unaware of.

   -- David