A Mathematical Theory of Learning Transformational Grammar.

Abstract

How to explain the fact that children learn language is a central problem for both psychology and linguistics. Suppes (1968) says that 'the linguists' insistence that they will accept nothing less than a complete and detailed account will probably turn out to be the most important conceptual demand on psychology in this century'. This paper speaks to that demand by presenting a complete formal characterization of the learning process and the language environment in which it operates. The assumptions are in general accord with psychological and linguistic principles. It is proved that the system converges; that is, the learning process, acting on the linguistic information it receives, learns the language, according to a formal criterion. (Author)

Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
Nov 01, 1973
Accession Number
AD0773632

Entities

People

  • Henry Hamburger
  • Kenneth Wexler

Organizations

  • University of California, Irvine

Tags

Communities of Interest

  • Materials and Manufacturing Processes

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • Environment
  • Grammars
  • Language
  • Learning
  • Linguistics
  • Morphology (Linguistics)
  • Psychological Phenomena And Processes
  • Psychology
  • Social Sciences
  • Transformational Grammars

Fields of Study

  • Linguistics

Readers

  • Computational Linguistics
  • Educational Psychology
  • Systems Analysis and Design