Comment by Jun8

This is not a new debate. Within Linguistics there has been a continuous push against statistical NLP models. Read the introduction of Manning's book, even he seems to be defensive about NLP.

Chomsky is a colossus, his achievements are well-known. However, at one point in many disciplines it comes to pass that the pioneers who pave the way in time become the very impediment to new ideas. His emphasis on Semantics have warped the minds of many generations of researchers (and some other ideas on universal grammar, too).

I experienced this first hand, my advisor, Prof. Raskin, a great researcher on semantics, nevertheless thought that statistical approaches were not the way to go. Sadly, in many Linguistics departments people are just not equipped with the statistical tools necessary to have a basic understand of what's being done in the NLP field. So NLP is generally taught under CS, EE, or CompE.