Language competence and natural language processing : Nature or nurture?
단국대학교, 교수, HaeKyung Wee · Lingua Humanitatis · 2019
This study reviews two opposing theories regarding human language competence, i.e. the logical nativism vs. empiricism, which is reminiscent of the so-called ‘nature vs. nurture’ dispute originating from Plato’s dialogues. Generative grammar is the representative linguistic theory that embodies the idea of logical nativism, whereas Constructivist theory is the typical experience-based linguistic approach. Connectionist model (deep learning), the leading methodology of current NLP(natural language processing), is reconsidered with respect to the two theories of language competence aforementioned and the empirical nature of deep learning devise is confirmed. By reviewing possibilities and limitations of integration of the empirical approach of connectionism and the rule-based approach of theoretical linguistics discussed by Pater (2019) and others, it is concluded that a hybrid approach is in need. Two additional factors supporting the hybrid approach are provided, one for a proper explanation of the difference between native language acquisition and foreign language acquisition and the other from the empirical nature incorporated in Montague semantics which is fundamentally a rule-based linguistic theory.