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THE HUMAN SEMANTIC POTENTIAL: SPATIAL LANGUAGE ANDCONSTRAINED CONNECTIONISM.Terry Regier. Cambridge, MA: MITPress, 1996. Pp. xvi + 220. $37.50 paper.

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 December 1997

Barbara Abbott
Affiliation:
Michigan State University

Abstract

The semantic potential referred to in the title of this book is the ability of humans to learn the (closed-class) terms for basic spatial relations, such as (for English) onto, above, and through. Regier presents a modified connectionist model of this ability designed to address three questions: (a) What kind of system can learn spatial terms? (b) How can this system function without negative evidence? and (c) What are the universal constraints on learnable spatial terms? The answers suggested to these questions are: (a) a modified connectionist network—one which incorporates structural constraints motivated by human physiology; (b) the assumption of mutual exclusion, that is, that different terms have mutually exclusive denotations; and (c) the structural constraints that are incorporated into the network.

Type
BOOK NOTICES
Copyright
1997 Cambridge University Press

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