No subject

[Tom Shultz]

Subject: Paper available: A connectionist model of the learning of 
personal pronouns in English.
Date: 23 August '94

FTP-host: archive.cis.ohio-state.edu
FTP-file: pub/neuroprose/shultz.pronouns.ps.Z

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The following paper has been placed in the Neuroprose archive at 
Ohio State University: 

A connectionist model of the learning of personal pronouns in 
English. (13 pages)

Thomas R. Shultz, David Buckingham, & Yuriko Oshima-Takane
Department of Psychology & McGill Cognitive Science Centre		
McGill University
Montreal, Quebec, Canada H3A 1B1		
shultz at psych.mcgill.ca

Abstract
Both experimental and observational psycholinguistic research have 
shown that children's acquisition of first and second person 
pronouns is affected by the opportunity to hear these pronouns used 
in speech not addressed to them. These effects were simulated with 
the cascade-correlation connectionist algorithm. The networks 
learned, in effect, to produce the pronouns "me" and "you" depending 
on identification of the speaker, addressee, and referent. Analysis of 
network performance and structure indicated that generalization to 
correct pronoun production was aided by listening to non-addressed 
speech and that persistent pronoun errors were created by listening 
to directly addressed speech. It was noted that explicit symbolic 
rule models would likely have difficulty simulating the pattern 
frequency effects common to the present simulations and to the 
natural language environment of the child.

The paper has been published in S. J. Hanson, T. Petsche, M. Kearns, & 
R. L. Rivest (Eds.) (1994). Computational learning theory and natural 
learning systems, Vol. 2: Intersection between theory and 
experiment (pp. 347-362). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.  

Instructions for ftp retrieval of this paper are given below.  If you 
are unable to retrieve and print it and therefore wish to receive a 
hardcopy, please send e-mail to shultz at psych.mcgill.ca

Please do not reply directly to this message.

FTP INSTRUCTIONS:

unix> ftp archive.cis.ohio-state.edu (or 128.146.8.52)
    Name: anonymous
    Password: <your e-mail address>
    ftp> cd pub/neuroprose
    ftp> binary
    ftp> get shultz.pronouns.ps.Z 
    ftp> quit
unix> uncompress shultz.pronouns.ps.Z 

Thanks to Jordan Pollack for maintaining this archive. 

Tom Shultz