ABSTRACT
Here is the history of linguistics in one sentence: once upon a time linguists (i.e., syntacticians) used augmented phrase structure grammars, then they went over to transformational grammars, and then some of them started using augmented phrase structure grammars again, <space for moral>. Whilst we are in this careful scholarly mode, let us do the same service for computational linguistics: once upon a time computational linguists (i.e., builders of parsers) used augmented phrase structure grammars, then they went over to augmented transition networks, and then many of them started using augmented phrase structure grammars again, <space for moral>. There are people who would have you believe in one or other of these stories (e.g., Chomsky, 1983, p, 65, for the first). And, of course, there is an element of truth in each of them. If an unrestricted rewriting system is an "augmented phrase structure grammar," then we can say that Chomsky (1951) propounds an augmented phrase structure grammar l .
