Tuesday, December 7, 1999
4:00 PM (reception following)
Room 35-225
LIDS Colloquium
Abstract
The vast expressive power of language is made possible by two principles: the arbitrary sound-meaning pairing underlying words, and the discrete combinatorial system underlying grammar. These principles implicate distinct cognitive mechanisms: associative memory and symbol-manipulating rules. I present evidence from many disciplines supporting the distinctness of these mechanisms, involving a case where the two mechanisms produce seemingly similar forms: irregular (`break-broke') and regular (`walk-walked') inflection. The evidence includes the vocabulary statistics and history of the English language, laboratory studies of children and adults, neurological disorders such as aphasia and anomia, and grammatical quirks like 'flied out', 'low-lifes', and 'Walkmans'.
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Modified: Dec 2, 1999|
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