Abstract

We suggest that the theory of dynamical systems provides a revealing general framework for modeling the representations and mechanism underlying syntactic processing. We show how a particular dynamical model, the Visitation Set Gravitation (VSG) model of Tabor, Juliano, and Tanenhaus (Language and Cognitive Processes, 1997), develops syntactic representations and models a set of contingent frequency effects in parsing that are problematic for other models. We also present new simulations showing how the model accounts for semantic effects in parsing and propose a new account of the distinction between syntactic and semantic incongruity. The results show how symbolic structures useful in parsing arise as emergent properties of connectionist dynamical systems. 1 1. Introduction 1.1 The Dynamics of Sentence Processing Linguistic input is typically consistent with multiple syntactic possibilities as it unfolds over time. Because syntax strongly constrains interpretation, the processing ...

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