Showing papers on "Learnability published in 1980"
Book•
1 Jan 1980
TL;DR: The authors of this book have developed a rigorous and unified theory that opens the study of language learnability to discoveries about the mechanisms of language acquisition in human beings and has important implications for linguistic theory, child language research, and the philosophy of language.
Abstract: The question of language learnability is central to modern linguistics. Yet, despite its importance, research into the problems of language learnability has rarely gone beyond the informal, commonsense intuitions that currently prevail among linguists and psychologists.By focusing their inquiry on formal language learnability theory--the interface of formal mathematical linguistics, linguistic theory and cognitive psychology--the authors of this book have developed a rigorous and unified theory that opens the study of language learnability to discoveries about the mechanisms of language acquisition in human beings. Their research has important implications for linguistic theory, child language research, and the philosophy of language."Formal Principles of Language Acquisition" develops rigorous mathematical methods for demonstrating the learnability of classes of grammars. It adapts the well-developed theories of transformational grammar to establish psychological motivation for a set of formal constraints on grammars sufficient for learnability. In addition, the research deals with such matters as the complex interaction between the mechanism of language learning and the learning environment, the empirical adequacy of the learnability constraints, feasibility and attainability of classes of grammars, the role of semantics in language learnability, and the adequacy of transformational grammars as models of human linguistic competence.This first serious and extended development of a formal and precise theory of language learnability will interest researchers in psychology and linguistics, and is recommended for use in graduate courses in language acquisition, linguistic theory, psycholinguistics, and mathematical linguistics, as well as interdisciplinary courses that deal with language learning, use, and philosophy.Contents: Methodological Considerations; Foundations of a Theory of Learnability; A Learnability Result for Transformational Grammar; Degree-2 Learnability; Linguistic Evidence for the Learnability Constraints; Function, Performance and Explanations; Further Issues: Linguistic Interaction, Invariance Principle, Open Problems; Notes, Bibliography, Index.
1,467 citations
1 Jan 1980
TL;DR: The most interesting and successful recent theories of meaning have been truth-conditional theories as discussed by the authors, and the paradigm of such theories is usually taken to be Tarski's recursive characterization of truth for certain formal languages.
Abstract: By far the most interesting and successful recent theories of meaning have been truth conditional. The paradigm of such theories is usually taken to be Tarski’s recursive characterization of truth for certain formal languages.1 Donald Davidson has both practiced truth-conditional theorizing in the semantics of natural languages, and has pleaded for the general importance of truth-conditional semantics.2 What is even more interesting and more unique to him, Davidson has sought to give a deeper motivation — perhaps a foundation — for truth-conditional semantics of the kind pioneered by Tarski. This deeper foundation Davidson has sought in the requirement of the learnability of the language in question.3
31 citations
1 Jan 1980
TL;DR: In this article, the authors focused on speech production in the child and found that children do not have a system of their own, and their phonology can be analyzed usefully only in relation to the adult system.
Abstract: Publisher Summary This chapter focuses on speech production in the child. The use of language is one of the most distinctive characteristics of the human species. One part of human language behavior, which is to a considerable extent autonomous, is the pronunciation; the speech sounds themselves as articulated and perceived by human beings in their use of language. The phonological production research, concerned with the structure of whole phonological systems, falls into three fairly distinct phases, related to successive dominant phonological theories—structuralist, generative, and post-generative. Learnability by children is the basic determinant of phonological structure. Children do not have a system of their own, and their phonology can be analyzed usefully only in relation to the adult system. They have, at an early age, full perceptual mastery of the adult phonological oppositions and have lexical representations equivalent to the adult surface forms. Their pronunciation falls short of the adult's because of lack of mastery of the necessary articulatory processes. Their phonological system includes a set of ordered realization rules that apply to the underlying representations to yield the pronunciation.