Flexibility, Networks, Maps

Discussing the advantages of using the ATN in modelling language comprehension, Eric Wanner and Michael Maratsos observe that early models, based on transformational grammar, attempted complete syntactic analysis of input but that more recent ones tend to rely on minimal syntactic information. They eschew both extremes, arguing that the amount of such information required must vary: ‘In sentences where there is little contextual or semantic information, a complete syntactic analysis may be necessary. In others a contextual or semantic resolution may be possible.’1 They rightly insist on flexibility. None the less, knowledge about semantic information is doubtless much more important to achieving it than that about syntactic information (the limitations of language-production programs certainly argue that). This is a complex issue. Robert F. Simmons’s theory of semantic networks offers a fruitful approach to further exploration of it and should serve as well to enlarge understanding of some of the problems with Schank’s system.