IJCNN-91-SEATTLE

[Noel Sharkey]

I agree with gary about CNLP (and cognition). Natural language does get ignored
at many of the connectionist (or neural net) meetings. It may be
that up until fairly recently there wasn't much research in that
area. But there is certainly quite a lot now. - (You can
mail lyn at my address below for a potted history and references 
up to 1990). There has been an explosion of work since 1988 and much
of it is related to cognitive areas (e.g. whether or not 
connectionist research offers a new theory of representation). 
CNLP also offers much of interest to general neuro-computing such
as the nature of connectionist compositionality and the encoding
and recognition of recursive structures.

CNLP research can provide input into some of the big questions
about the relationship between neural net and mind (i use the more
neutral term neural net rather than brain), though of course i am
broadening the field here.

Obviously, i would like to see this area represented more at the
major conferences. Do others feel that this field is being backgrounded?
and if so why do you think it is? Perhaps it is felt that this is an
inappropriate area for connectionist research - that it is too high
level, or the it should be left to the symbol grinders. who knows?