storage and computation

[Gregory Ward]

> In any case, I believe the assesment that children rely a great deal on both
> rule-generalization and storage-and-retrieval is correct.  With less-marked
> forms, there will be a need for more storage and retrieval, since
> relationships among forms will be more constructive, whereas with
> more-marked forms, rule-generalization will be more heavily relied on, since
> form relationships will be more conformative.  In the case of "goed" instead
> of "went" and "two-th" instead of "second" it would seem to me that a child
> is actually in the experimentation stage, such that he/she is trying to
> determine whether the form is conformative or constructive.  So, the child
> applies the expected conformative rule, and depending on the response
> (correction or acceptance) the form is reinforced as to which type it is,
> and how to appropriately deal with it (should I store this form for
> remembering later, or will the rule do?)

Speaking of ordinal/cardinal forms, Richard Sproat and I noticed (Lg 67)
that in cases like "This is the second time in as many weeks", it is the
semantically transparent (and well-instantiated) relationship between
ordinals and cardinals (irrespective of their surface realizations) that
allows the apparent mismatch.

Gregory
--

Gregory Ward
Department of Linguistics
Northwestern University
2016 Sheridan Road
Evanston IL  60208-4090

e-mail: gw at nwu.edu
tel: 847-491-8055
fax: 847-491-3770
www: http://www.ling.nwu.edu/~ward