LINGUIST List 8.25

Thu Jan 16 1997

FYI: Preprint, Arabic software

Editor for this issue: Susan Robinson <suelinguistlist.org>

Directory

1. Margaret Ann Doll, Preprint: Models of Word Reading and Lexical Decision
2. Joseph D. Edwards, Microsoft Arabic Software

>The following preprint is available via anonymous ftp and the web:
>
>		Structure and function in the lexical system:
> Insights from distributed models of word reading and lexical decision
>
>			 David C. Plaut
> Departments of Psychology and Computer Science, Carnegie Mellon University,
> and the Center for the Neural Basis of Cognition, Pittsburgh PA, USA
>
>		To appear in Language and Cognitive Processes
>
>The traditional view of the lexical system stipulates word-specific
>representations and separate pathways for regular and exception words. An
>alternative approach views lexical knowledge as developing from general
>learning principles applied to mappings among distributed representations of
>written and spoken words and their meanings. On this distributed account,
>distinctions among words and between words and nonwords are not reified in
>the structure of the system but reflect the sensitivity of learning to the
>relative systematicity in the various mappings. Two simulation experiments
>address findings that have seemed problematic for the distributed approach.
>Both involve a consideration of the role of semantics in normal and impaired
>lexical processing. The first experiment accounts for patients with impaired
>comprehension but intact reading in terms of individual differences in the
>division of labor between the semantic and phonological pathways. The second
>experiment demonstrates that a distributed network can reliably distinguish
>words from nonwords based on a measure of familiarity defined over semantics.
>The results underscore the importance of relating function to structure in
>the lexical system within the context of an explicit computational framework.
>
> ftp-host:	cnbc.cmu.edu [128.2.244.1]
> ftp-file:	pub/user/plaut/papers/PlautINPRESSLCP.structure.ps.Z
>			OR
>		pub/user/plaut/papers/uncompressed/PlautINPRESSLCP.structure.ps
>			
> ftp://cnbc.cmu.edu:/pub/user/plaut/papers/PlautINPRESSLCP.structure.ps.Z
>
> 19 pages; 183Kb compressed; 498Kb uncompressed
>
>=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
>David Plaut <plautcmu.edu> Center for the Neural Basis of Cognition and
>Mellon Institute 115, CNBC Departments of Psychology and Computer Science
>Carnegie Mellon University MI 115I, 412/268-5145 (fax -5060) 
>4400 Fifth Ave., Pittsburgh PA 15213-2683 http://www.cnbc.cmu.edu/~plaut
>"Doubt is not a pleasant condition but certainty is an absurd one." -Voltaire
>=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
>
>
 
	 --Margaret
 

Microsoft's Arabic products are detailed at their site:

	http://www.windows.com/middleeast/arabic/default.htm