Alistair Knott
2012
Mapping sensorimotor sequences to word sequences: A connectionist model of language acquisition and sentence generationdoi.orgPDF
Cognition, 2012
In this article we present a neural network model of sentence generation. The network has both technical and conceptual innovations. Its main technical novelty is in its semantic representations: the messages which form the input to the network are structured as ...
2010
A sensorimotor characterisation of syntax, and its implications for models of language evolutiondoi.orgPDF
Proceedings of the 8th International Conference on the Evolution of Language, pages 214-221, 2010
In this paper I consider the possibility that language is more strongly grounded in sensorimotor cognition than is normally assumed---a scenario which would be providential for language evolution theorists. I argue that the syntactic theory most compatible with this scenario, ...MORE ⇓
In this paper I consider the possibility that language is more strongly grounded in sensorimotor cognition than is normally assumed---a scenario which would be providential for language evolution theorists. I argue that the syntactic theory most compatible with this scenario, perhaps surprisingly, is generative grammar. I suggest that there may be a way of interpreting the syntactic structures posited in one theory of generative grammar (Minimalism) as descriptions of sensorimotor processing, and discuss the implications of this for models of language evolution.