RUI: Self-organization and the Acquisition, Representation, and Processing of Language

一个普通的成年说话者在任何给定的语言中都能主动控制数以万计的单词。与按字母顺序排列单词的字典不同，心理词典根据单词在语言中的用途，例如，它们的语法和语义功能，以复杂的方式在大脑中组织单词。这项研究将解决这种组织如何在儿童时期出现，在成年期定居，有时在混乱的思想中崩溃。这项研究将为当前的语言神经网络模型提供另一种方法，因为它旨在开发一种依赖于自组织原则的认知和神经心理学上合理的模型。自组织是人类学习的一个动态过程，它允许学习者收集有关“输入空间”（即事物的限制、约束和可能性）的信息，并不断地以最优的方式组织这些信息，以完成手头的任务。在李的发展词汇模型（DevLex）的基础上，新模型将融合自组织、Hebbian学习、词汇共现学习和动态增长的特性。这些计算特性使该模型非常适合研究儿童、正常成人、第二语言学习者和脑损伤患者的人类心理词汇及其结构、表征和处理。这个模型将试图解释语言使用中的各种各样的现象。特别是，它的设计特征将允许评估来自多个领域的重要问题：(1)作为学习语言输入的功能的结构组织表征的发展，以及组织结构对语言概括（儿童语言习得）的影响；(2)双语词汇的独特性和整体性，以及双语词汇表征和习得（双语语言加工）的跨语言差异；(3)词汇歧义和语法歧义的发展，以及患者对歧义的加工（词汇歧义加工）；(4)阅读习得中正字法、音韵学和语义学的相互作用，以及正常阅读和发展性阅读障碍（正常阅读和障碍阅读）的跨语言差异；(5)类别特异性表征的习得和受损语义表征的结构（类别特异性语言障碍）。这些方面的建模结果将为心理语言学和认知科学的理论和实证问题提供重要的见解。理解不同语言的正常和无序过程对语言教育也有重要意义。

An ordinary adult speaker has active control of tens of thousands of words in any given language. Unlike a dictionary that lists words alphabetically, the mental dictionary organizes words in the mind in complex ways according to their uses in language, for example, their grammatical and semantic functions. This research will address how such organization arises in childhood, settles in adulthood, and sometimes breaks down in disordered minds. The research will provide an alternative approach to current neural network models of language, because it aims at developing a cognitively and neuropsychologically plausible model that relies on self-organizing principles. Self-organization, a dynamic process of human learning, allows the learner to gather information about the "input space" (i.e., the limits, constraints, and possibilities of things) and to continuously organize the information in ways optimal for the task at hand. Building on Li's developmental lexicon model (DevLex), the new model will incorporate properties of self-organization, Hebbian learning, lexical co-occurrence learning, and dynamic growth. These computational properties should make the model well suited for the study of the human mental lexicon, its structure, representation, and processing in children, normal adults, second language learners, and brain-injured patients. The model will attempt to account for a wide variety of phenomena in language use. In particular, its design characteristics will permit the evaluation of important problems from a number of domains: (1) the development of structurally organized representation as a function of learning the linguistic input, and the impact of the organizational structure on linguistic generalization (child language acquisition); (2) the distinct versus integrated nature of bilingual lexicon, and crosslinguistic differences in bilingual lexical representation and acquisition (bilingual language processing); (3) the development of lexical ambiguity and grammatical ambiguity, and the processing of ambiguity in patients (lexical ambiguity processing); (4) the interaction between orthography, phonology, and semantics in reading acquisition, and the crosslinguistic differences in normal reading and developmental dyslexia (normal and impaired reading); and (5) the acquisition of category-specific representation, and the structure of lesioned semantic representations in patients (category-specific language impairment). Results from the modeling of these aspects will provide significant insights into theoretical and empirical issues in psycholinguistics and cognitive science. Understanding of normal and disordered processes in different languages will also have significant implications for language education.