Elsevier

Advances in Computers

Volume 15, 1976, Pages 181-237
Advances in Computers

The Computational Study of Language Acquisition

https://doi.org/10.1016/S0065-2458(08)60522-7Get rights and content

Publisher Summary

This chapter discusses the problems involved in language acquisition modeling, a summary of the computational efforts in that direction, and a closer examination of a particular ongoing modeling effort. Computational models play a crucial role in developing satisfactory theories of the language acquisition process. This conviction is based on the complexity of both the grammatical system and the various learning processes that must interact in the acquisition task. The purpose of the type of modeling with which this chapter is concerned is both theoretical and experimental. The experimental function is realized when the model is run as a simulation of behavior, and the output for inputs is examined to see if it is consistent with available empirical data. Within the theoretical domain, computational models have a number of well-known advantages, including that of forcing explicitness. In facing the details concerning the components of a theory and their interactions, the possibility or impossibility of a particular hypothesized entity often becomes clear without running a simulation at all. The important feature of computational models in exploring language acquisition lies in their ability to express in a flexible manner the complex interactions among the evolving grammar, the learning processes, and the input data. It should be clear that the models examined in this chapter have a long way to go; yet they have also progressed in their sophistication in the past few years, and currently represent the best-delineated available attempts at explaining the syntactic acquisition task. Although this chapter does not treat phonological or semantic acquisition, computational models provide an equally promising tool in those areas.

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