Yikes- I'm a bit overwhelmed with all the thinking in my mind this week! I argued rather strongly in a discussion tonight a position I had never clearly understood before: that linguists should very clearly divide themselves into two camps, computer scientists and cognitive scientists. What I mean by this is that I think there are two possible goals for linguistics, and we shouldn't get them confused:
1) create a formal model/grammar of language: the more accurate it predicts what humans actually do, the better
2) understand what is going on in our mind when we use language
It seems to me that confusing these leads to syntacticians making theories of traces, which works (goal 1), and then predicting this will lead to increased processing time (goal 2), which is not true. Or in another case of confusion, Montague grammar and lambdas are nice model theoretic tools for talking about meaning, but no one wants to say that this is what goes on in our head... bad things happen when we start trying to say that it is.
Anyway, I think most people pursue either goal 1 or goal 2, but aren't always clear about it. This makes it hard for them and their readers. From my one conversation with Roger L., he gave me the impression that computational psycholinguists try to answer questions of theory 2 using tools developed for theory 1... is this a sensible way to interpret the sub-field? I think interactions in general between the two camps are good, as long as people respect what I see as two very distinct goals. I'd really love to know what you all think about this, especially because our department seems to have people at the far ends of each of these camps... at least it seems so to me.
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