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Paper at a Glance

Language as a dynamical system
Jeffrey L. Elman
University of California, San Diego

1 Introduction Despite considerable diversity among theories about how humans process language, there are a number of fundamental assumptions which are shared by most such theories. This consensus extends to the very basic question about what counts as a cognitive process. So although many cognitive scientists are fond of referring to the brain as a `mental organ' (e.g., Chomsky, 1975)---implying a similarity to other organs such as the liver or kidneys---it is also assumed that the brain is an organ with special properties which set it apart. Brains `carry out computation' (it is argued); they `entertain propositions'; and they `support representations'. Brains may be organs, but they are very different than the other organs found in the body. Obviously, there are substantial differences between brains and kidneys, just as there are between kidneys and hearts and the skin. It would be silly to minimze these differences. On the other hand, a cautionary note is also in order. The domains over which the various organs operate are quite different, but their common biological substrate is quite similar. The brain is indeed quite remarkable, and does some things which are very similar to human­made symbol processors; but there are also profound differences between the brain and digital symbol processors, and attempts to ignore these on grounds of simplification or abstraction run the risk of fundamentally misunderstanding the nature of neural computation (Churchland & Sejnowski, 1992). In a larger sense, I raise the more general  Elman Page 2 warning that (as Ed Hutchins has suggested) ``cognition may not be what we think it is''. Among other things, I will suggest in this chapter that language (and cognition in general) may be more usefully understood as the behavior of a dynamical system. I believe this is a view which both acknowledges the similarity of the brain to other bodily ...

@incollection{elman95languageAs,
  author={J. L. Elman},
  title={Language as a dynamical system},
  year={1995},
  pages={195-223},
  address={Cambridge, MA},
  editor={R.F. Port and T. van Gelder},
  publisher={MIT Press},
  booktitle={Mind as Motion: Explorations in the Dynamics of Cognition},
  url={http://www.isrl.uiuc.edu/~amag/langev/paper/elman95languageAs.html}
}

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