Accession Number:

ADA459428

Title:

Learning Regular Languages from Positive Evidence

Descriptive Note:

Corporate Author:

MASSACHUSETTS UNIV AMHERST DEPT OF COMPUTER SCIENCE

Personal Author(s):

• Firoiu, Laura
• Oates, Tim
• Cohen, Paul R.

Report Date:

1998-01-01

Pagination or Media Count:

7.0

Abstract:

Children face an enormously difficult task in learning their native language. It is widely believed that they do not receive or make little use of negative evidence Marcus, 1993 and yet it has been proven that many classes of languages less powerful than natural languages cannot be learned in the absence of negative evidence Gold, 1964. In this paper we present an approach to learning good approximations to members of one such class of languages, the regular languages, based on positive evidence alone.

Descriptors:

• *LEARNING
• *NATURAL LANGUAGE
• SPEECH
• HUMAN INTELLIGENCE
• VOICE COMMUNICATIONS
• CHILDREN

Subject Categories:

• Linguistics
• Psychology

Distribution Statement:

APPROVED FOR PUBLIC RELEASE