Learning in minimalism-based language modeling

The natural language version of the Soar cognitive modeling system (Newell, 1990) has enabled a number of language modeling applications from on-line parsing behavior (Lewis, 1993) to simultaneous interpretation (Lonsdale, 1997, 1998) to robotic control (Benjamin, Lonsdale, & Lyons, 2004). The system supports an integrated approach to incremental comprehension and generation. Learning mechanisms account for processes in language performance from deliberate, explicit reasoning to automatic, recogni-tional expertise. Syntactic processing in prior versions of the system followed the Principles and Parameters approach to syntax. Minimalist incremental parsing This paper introduces new results: how the syntactic model of an incoming utterance is constructed incrementall