For describing the concept formation in the previous subsection, it sometimes seems to be rather convenient and sufficient that we only consider the upper level, i.e. the conceptual (lemma) level, without loss of generality; as illustrated in Fig. 9.1, the kernel units at the lemma level can be mostly represented by symbolic nodes rather than regular kernel units. This account also holds for the description of syntax representation. Thus, to describe the syntax repre- sentation, or, more generally, language data processing, conventional symbolic approaches are considered to be useful. However, it is seen that, in order to embody such symbolic representation related to the language data processing and eventually incorporate into the design of the AMS, the kernel memory principle can still play the central role. (For instance, various lexical networks based upon conventional symbolism as found in (Kinoshita, 1996) can also be interpreted within the kernel memory principle.)
Then, we here consider how the syntax representation can be achieved in terms of the kernel memory principle described so far. Although to give a full account of the syntax representation is beyond the scope of this book, in this subsection, we see how the principle of kernel memory can be incorporated for the syntax representation.
Now, let us examine a simple sentence, “The dog runs.”, by means of the kernel memory representation of the mental lexicon as illustrated in Fig. 9.1:
9.2 Language Module 177
THE
RUN DOG
RUNS
NOUN VERB’’
PRONOUN
NOUN VERB
NOUN’’
NOUN’’
‘‘PRONOUN
‘‘SINGULAR
’’NOUN VERB’’
‘‘SINGULAR NOUN’’
‘‘SINGULAR
Fig. 9.3.An example of the mental lexicon representing the simple sentence “THE DOG RUNS.” in terms of the kernel memory representation.
as in Fig. 9.1, it is firstly considered that the three kernel units representing the respective concepts “THE”, “DOG”, and “RUN” all reside at the lemma level and can be subsequently activated by the transfer of activations from the kernel unit(s) at the lower (i.e the lexeme) level.
Second, the word order “DOG” then “RUN” can be determined, due to the kernel unit representing the directional flow “NOUN”→“VERB”, given the activations from both the (symbolic) kernel units for “DOG” and “RUN”
as the input elements (i.e. defined in (9.1)) to the kernel unit, as illustrated in Fig. 9.3 (i.e. since the kernel units for “DOG” and “RUN” have the connection via the link weight with “NOUN” and “VERB”, respectively). Similarly, the word order “THE” then “DOG” can be established due to the kernel unit rep- resenting the directional flow (or the association in between) “PRONOUN”→
“NOUN”. (For actually modelling the kernel units that represent such (mono- )directional flows, refer back to Sect. 3.3.4.) Here, it is assumed that these two directional flows, i.e. the flows “NOUN” → “VERB” and “PRONOUN” →
“NOUN”, have already been acquired through the learning process of thelan- guagemodule within the AMS.
Then, it may be seen that the determination of the word order in the above is due to the higher-level concepts such as those represented by the data flow “NOUN”→“VERB” or “PRONOUN”→“NOUN”. In other words, the word sequence “THE” →“DOG” →“RUN” follows due to the higher-level
178 9 Language and Thinking Modules
concepts formed (in advance) within the lexicon by means of the language module.
However, in contrast to the aforementioned manner of determination, within the context of the learning by the AMS, it is also possible to con- sider that this has been learnt from the examples; i.e. firstly the concept formation of the words “DOG”, “RUNS”, “THE”, etc, as well as the word sequence, occurs through multiple presentations of such word sequences to the AMS and the associated learning process of the memory modules (see Chaps. 7 and 8). Then, the higher-level concept (i.e. to “generalise” the word sequence) is formed later by a further learning process (e.g. with reinforcement).
Third, similar to the rule of the aforementioned directional flows, it is considered that the rule in which “since the noun “DOG” is a singular noun of the third person, the following verb must have “S” to indicate this in the present simple form and thus “RUNS”, instead of the original “RUN”, in English” has also been acquired through the learning process of the language module (i.e., similar to the higher-level concept of the word sequence, it can be ultimately considered that even this complex rule has been acquired in the aforementioned “learning through examples” principle). This is represented by the sequences of the activations:
1) “THE” → “PRONOUN”, “DOG” → “NOUN”, and “RUN” →
“VERB”;
2) The flows in 1)→“SINGULAR NOUN”;
3) The flows in 1,2) → “VERB”→ “SINGULAR NOUN →VERB”
→“RUNS”
Therefore, it can be considered that, within the kernel memory principle, the language module is composed of a set of the grammatical rules which generalises achainof concepts (i.e. represented by a chain of the kernel units responsible for the corresponding concepts, due to the link weights in between with directional flows), e.g. “NOUN”→ “VERB”, “DOG”→ “SINGULAR NOUN”→. . . “RUNS”. . ., and so forth.
Moreover, in (Ullman, 2001; Sakai, 2002), it is considered that the acqui- sition of the grammatical rules involves the procedural memory, whereas the learning of words is due to the declarative (explicit) LTM. We will return to a further issue of the grammatical rules in terms of the data processing due to thethinkingmodule in the next section.
In addition, the utility of the pronoun such as “THE” requires the notion not merely related to the syntactical rules but also (some sort of) thespatial information about the AMS (and hence the memory to store it temporarily), i.e. to describe the dog actually exists e.g. in front of the body (thus, the dog is “spatially” away and perceived via the input: sensation module), or to remember (shortly) the concept of the “dog” that specifies a certain dog appeared previously in the context (thus, the requirement for the temporal memory). Therefore, it is considered that the notion of the pronouns such as
9.2 Language Module 179
xc xA
x K
K KA
B B
C
Fig. 9.4.A kernel (sub-)network consisting of the three kernel unitsKA,KB, and KC
“IT”, “THAT”,“THIS”, etc, also involves the data processing within other modules (such as thememory/innate structure modules) of the AMS.
Before moving on to the discussion of the thinking module, we revisit the issue of how the concept formation can be realised within the kernel memory context in the next subsection, which is also closely related to the implemen- tation of the syntax representation described so far.