Using sentence comprehension as a case study for all of cognitive                  science, David Townsend and Thomas Bever offer an integration of two major                  approaches, the symbolic-computational and the associative-connectionist. The                  symbolic-computational approach emphasizes the formal manipulation of symbols that                  underlies creative aspects of language behavior. The associative-connectionist                  approach captures the intuition that most behaviors consist of accumulated habits.                  The authors argue that the sentence is the natural level at which associative and                  symbolic information merge during comprehension.The authors develop and support an                  analysis-by-synthesis model that integrates associative and symbolic information in                  sentence comprehension. This integration resolves problems each approach faces when                  considered independently. The authors review classic and contemporary symbolic and                  associative theories of sentence comprehension, and show how recent developments in                  syntactic theory fit well with the integrated analysis-by-synthesis model. They                  offer analytic, experimental, and neurological evidence for their model and discuss                  its implications for broader issues in cognitive science, including the logical                  necessity of an integration of symbolic and connectionist approaches in the                  field.

Sentence Comprehension: The Integration of Habits and Rules (Language, Speech, and Communication) PDF

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