The Acquisition of Syntactic Knowledge

This landmark work in computational linguistics is of great importance both theoretically and practically because it shows that much of English grammar can be learned by a simple program.

A number of "mini-theories" of learning are incorporated in this study of syntax with results that should appeal to a wide range of scholarly interests. These include how lexical categories, phonological rule systems, and phrase structure rules are learned; the role of semantic-syntactic interaction in language acquisition; how a "parameter setting" model may be formalized as a learning procedure; how multiple constraints (from syntax, thematic knowledge, or phrase structure) interact to aid acquisition; how transformational-type rules may be learned; and, the role of lexical ambiguity in language acquisition.Robert Berwick is an assistant professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at MIT. The Acquisition of Syntactic Knowledge is sixteenth in the Artificial Intelligence Series, edited by Patrick Winston and Michael Brady.