Inflection as a Model System for the Psychology of Language

该项目研究了人类语言的一个子系统--屈折变化(从走路派生的能力，或从妻子派生出来的能力)。这一现象将从不同的学科进行深入的详细研究，旨在建立一个统一的理论和数据库，了解该系统如何通过计算方式工作，如何学习，如何在大脑中表现出变化。一个关键假设是，规则词形变化(行走-行走)是由非常普遍的心理规则(加法-ED)计算出来的，而不规则词形变化(来-来)涉及在联想记忆中记忆两个独立的单词，仅允许对发音相似的单词进行有限的概括。这一假说与当前对联结主义和认知符号加工模型的研究有关，它预测规则屈折和不规则屈折应该以不同的方式分离。该项目包括测试说英语和其他语言的人如何将屈折模式应用于现有的和新的单词，受试者实时产生和识别屈折形式的实验，对共性和屈折系统变化的跨语言调查，以及模型构建。

ABSTRACT This project studies one subsystem of human language, inflection (the ability to derive walked from walk or wives from wife). The phenomenon is to be studied in intensive detail from a variety of disciplines, aiming at a unified theory and database of how the system works computationally, how it is learned, how it varies represented in the brain. A key hypothesis is that regular inflection (walk-walks) is computed by a very general mental rule ("add -ed") whereas irregular inflection (come-came) involves memorization of two separate words in an associative memory, allowing limited generalization only to similar-sounding words. This hypothesis, which bears on current study of connectionist and symbol-processing models of cognition, predicts that regular and irregular inflection should dissociate in a variety of ways. The project include tests of how speakers of English and other languages apply inflectional patterns to existing and new words, experiments where subjects produce and recognize inflected forms in real time, crosslinguistic surveys of universals and variation in inflectional systems, and model construction.