What Complexity Differences Reveal About Domains in Language

Jeffrey Heinz; William Idsardi

doi:10.1111/tops.12000

What Complexity Differences Reveal About Domains in Language

Jeffrey Heinz
, William Idsardi

Linguistics

University of Maryland, College Park

Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review

58 Scopus citations

Abstract

An important distinction between phonology and syntax has been overlooked. All phonological patterns belong to the regular region of the Chomsky Hierarchy, but not all syntactic patterns do. We argue that the hypothesis that humans employ distinct learning mechanisms for phonology and syntax currently offers the best explanation for this difference.

Original language	English
Pages (from-to)	111-131
Number of pages	21
Journal	Topics in Cognitive Science
Volume	5
Issue number	1
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1111/tops.12000
State	Published - Jan 2013

Keywords

Computational complexity
Language learning
Phonology
Syntax

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10.1111/tops.12000

Cite this

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abstract = "An important distinction between phonology and syntax has been overlooked. All phonological patterns belong to the regular region of the Chomsky Hierarchy, but not all syntactic patterns do. We argue that the hypothesis that humans employ distinct learning mechanisms for phonology and syntax currently offers the best explanation for this difference.",

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KW - Phonology

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What Complexity Differences Reveal About Domains in Language

Abstract

Keywords

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