This month's issue Computational Linguistics has a great article by Mark Steedman entitled "On Becoming a Discipline". In it, he talks about the success and prestige of physics compared to computational linguistics and provides an interesting analogy between the following propositions (the first being a quote from a physicist):
- "Everything is made of particles, so physics is very important."
- Human knowledge is expressed in language. So computational linguistics is very important.
Since I work as a computational linguist, I'm very sympathetic to the analogy. But I have to admit that it contains a few leaps of logic. Let's spell out the logic a bit more explicitly:
- Everything is made of particles. Physics is the study of particles, so physics is very important.
- Human knowledge is expressed in language. Computational linguistics is the study of language, so computational linguistics is very important.
When stated in this way, it's clear that there is a defect in (4). Computational linguistics is the study of language but only to the extent that linguistics is the study of language and computational linguistics is a subfield of linguistics. Therefore, the proposition is more correctly stated as follows:
- Human knowledge is expressed in language. Linguistics is the study of language, so linguistics is very important.
In order to justify the proposition that computational linguistics per se is very important, we would need to identify computational linguistics with linguistics or justify the importance of computational linguistics over other subfields of linguistics. That, I think, would be subject to controversy.
Comments (1)
I would also dispute even the physics envy part of the argument. Particle physics is not all of physics. And, even if it were, the field of study could be mistaken to the extent that its theories and predictions were fundamentally wrong (think phlogiston or ether).
The argument should be something like:
(1) Right understanding of X is important
(2) X is made of Y
(3) Therefore, a right understanding of Y is important.
e.g.,
(1) A right understanding of human knowledge is important
(2) Human knowledge is expressed in language
(3) Therefore, a right understanding of language is important
Whether the field of linguistics or its tactically-oriented offspring computational linguistics is a right understanding of language is left as an exercise for the reader (see phlogiston and ether, above).
Posted by Will Fitzgerald | April 8, 2008 4:15 AM
Posted on April 8, 2008 04:15