Simplicity and the Form of Grammars
The goal of theory construction is explanation: for language, theory for particular languages (grammar) and for the faculty of language FoL (the innate endowment for language acquisition). A primitive notion of simplicity of grammars is number of symbols, but this is too crude. An improved measure...
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Polish Academy of Sciences
2021-07-01
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| Series: | Journal of Language Modelling |
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| Online Access: | https://jlm.ipipan.waw.pl/index.php/JLM/article/view/257 |
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doaj-6222d976d4884aef85243a863446f22c2021-07-22T20:13:28ZengPolish Academy of SciencesJournal of Language Modelling2299-856X2299-84702021-07-0191Simplicity and the Form of GrammarsNoam Chomsky0University of Arizona The goal of theory construction is explanation: for language, theory for particular languages (grammar) and for the faculty of language FoL (the innate endowment for language acquisition). A primitive notion of simplicity of grammars is number of symbols, but this is too crude. An improved measure distinguishes grammars that capture genuine properties of language from those that do not. The theory of FoL must meet the empirical conditions of learnability (under extreme poverty of stimulus), and evolvability (given the limited but not insignificant evidence available). Recent work provides promising insights into how these twin conditions may be satisfied. https://jlm.ipipan.waw.pl/index.php/JLM/article/view/257simplicityexplanationevaluationgrammarfaculty of languagelearnability |
| collection |
DOAJ |
| language |
English |
| format |
Article |
| sources |
DOAJ |
| author |
Noam Chomsky |
| spellingShingle |
Noam Chomsky Simplicity and the Form of Grammars Journal of Language Modelling simplicity explanation evaluation grammar faculty of language learnability |
| author_facet |
Noam Chomsky |
| author_sort |
Noam Chomsky |
| title |
Simplicity and the Form of Grammars |
| title_short |
Simplicity and the Form of Grammars |
| title_full |
Simplicity and the Form of Grammars |
| title_fullStr |
Simplicity and the Form of Grammars |
| title_full_unstemmed |
Simplicity and the Form of Grammars |
| title_sort |
simplicity and the form of grammars |
| publisher |
Polish Academy of Sciences |
| series |
Journal of Language Modelling |
| issn |
2299-856X 2299-8470 |
| publishDate |
2021-07-01 |
| description |
The goal of theory construction is explanation: for language, theory for particular languages (grammar) and for the faculty of language FoL (the innate endowment for language acquisition). A primitive notion of simplicity of grammars is number of symbols, but this is too crude. An improved measure distinguishes grammars that capture genuine properties of language from those that do not. The theory of FoL must meet the empirical conditions of learnability (under extreme poverty of stimulus), and evolvability (given the limited but not insignificant evidence available). Recent work provides promising insights into how these twin conditions may be satisfied.
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| topic |
simplicity explanation evaluation grammar faculty of language learnability |
| url |
https://jlm.ipipan.waw.pl/index.php/JLM/article/view/257 |
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AT noamchomsky simplicityandtheformofgrammars |
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