>Chomsky appears to be somewhat desperately trying to keep up with these changes
Not sure where you're getting that from. Which aspects of Chomsky's recent work do you think are drive by some kind of desire to keep up with developments in NLP?
>his models, which in turn have grown vastly more complex over the years compared with his original simple and elegant x' theory
X' theory was not really 'original'. It was first introduced in Remarks on Nominalization in 1970. The models have not in fact grown vastly more complex. In a number of respects quite significant simplifications have been achieved (e.g. the reduction of large numbers of construction-specific transformational rules to a small number of generalizations about A and A' movement).
Not sure where you're getting that from. Which aspects of Chomsky's recent work do you think are drive by some kind of desire to keep up with developments in NLP?
>his models, which in turn have grown vastly more complex over the years compared with his original simple and elegant x' theory
X' theory was not really 'original'. It was first introduced in Remarks on Nominalization in 1970. The models have not in fact grown vastly more complex. In a number of respects quite significant simplifications have been achieved (e.g. the reduction of large numbers of construction-specific transformational rules to a small number of generalizations about A and A' movement).