Language emergence

Abstract

In the 1950s, research ers thought that children learn language through imitat ion, guided by principles of shaping and rein forcement (Skinner, 1957). By the end of the decade, the new information-processing psychology (Newell & Simon, 1972) and the rapidly growing theory of generative grammar (Chomsky & Halle, 1968) were challenging this view. These new par adigms expressed the complexities of human behavior not as links between habits, bu t as complex systems of interlocking rules. The power achieved by these systems re lied on the ability of the modeler to stipulate the right set of rules in terms of their elements, combinations, and patterns of rule orderings. The successes of these stipulative systems can be attributed to the precision of their formulation and the xpressiveness of the formal production system language on which they relied (Hopcroft & Ullman, 1979). Stipulative rule systems promoted the articulation of enormous cognitive architectures of seemingly impossible complexity (MacWhinney, 1994). As these systems grew in complexity, testing the empirical grounding of their individual components be came increasingly impossible. Through its descriptive successes, stipulationism ended up sewing the seeds of its own conceptual destruction.