Words and Rules D2 (Ch. 3, 4, 5) and Debriefing – D55

The day didn’t look to good after a discussion like the one on Euclid, until our dialogue of Words and Rules. We were a small group, I think 12, and we had a very good dialogue. We respected the rubrics, asked genuine questions, were profound with the text, and had a great interaction of ideas. I didn’t take notes, but I recorded it. One of the most important things we discussed was the distinction between the theory developed by Chomsky and Halle (generative phonology, rules rule, rationalist, rules), and the theory of Rumelhart and McClelland (there are no rules, empiricism, words). Another important point is what Steven Pinker and Prince proposes according to these two theories:

“Prince and I have proposed a hybrid in which Chomsky and Halle are basically right about regular inflection and Rumelhart and McClelland are basically right about irregular inflection. Our proposal is simply the traditional words-and-rules theory with a twist. Regular verbs are computed by a rule that combines a symbol for a verb stem with a symbol for the suffix. Irregular verbs are pairs of words retrieved from the mental dictionary, a part of memory. Here is the twist: Memory is not a list of unrelated slots, like RAM in a computer, but is associative, a bit like the Rumelhart-McClelland pattern associator memory. Not only are words linked to words, but bits of words are linked to bits of words.” Page 117-118.