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<Paper uid="J95-4003">
  <Title>Modularity and Information Content Classes in Principle-based Parsing</Title>
  <Section position="7" start_page="536" end_page="536" type="concl">
    <SectionTitle>
5. Conclusion
</SectionTitle>
    <Paragraph position="0"> The parser described in this paper has been implemented for English. It parses a homogeneous, though small, set of sentences. As a matter of fact, one of the interesting features of this implementation is that it offers a unified treatment of all of the chain types presented above.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="1"> The parser has clear limitations due to the fact that it was developed mainly for exploratory purposes. For instance, it deals only with very simple nominal phrases and it does not treat adjunction. In other respects, however, this design lends itself readily to extensions: The structure building and chain formation routines do not rely on characteristics that are found only in English or in a head initial language, as was discussed in the previous section.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="2"> In the course of pondering the relation between the grammar and the parser, and mostly how the conceptual modularity of current linguistic theories can be implemented, one learns that, in fact, the notion of modular theory is both true and false, at least in its present incarnation. All linguists strive to develop theories that rest on general, abstract principles, which interact in complex ways, so that many empirical facts &amp;quot;fall out&amp;quot; from a few principles. Such a theory is clearly not modular, although highly general and abstract. On the other hand, linguistic concepts operate on different primitives: intuitively, X-theory, and principles of argument structure or coreference are different objects. Future research must lead in a direction that enables us to define more precisely this basic intuition. Modularity, if it exists, is to be found in the linguistic content, and not in the organization of the theory.</Paragraph>
  </Section>
class="xml-element"></Paper>