[Avery.Andrews 921026.0936]
(Bill Powers (921024.0830))
Suppose that comprehension is effected by a very robust, error-
tolerant, context- & content-= sensitive system. If it fails to
find a suitable meaning for something that gets said, that
generates an error-signal that prompts some reorganization (this isoff the main point, & just included to provide a wider context).
So far so good: the higher system controls for meaning by finding A
lower-level sentence that produces that meaning. Reorganization takes
place when no sentence with a suitable meaning can be found.
I don't think we're talking about quite the same thing here. The
higher level system here is supposed to work by controlling for a
perception of finding (appropriate) meanings in what people are
saying - no sentences are getting produced here.
But when the comprehension system does find a reasonable meaning
for an utterance, something else happens: that meaning is sent to
the production system, which in effect returns a list of all the
different ways it might express the same meaning (assuming the
perspective of the original utterer).This gets a little awkward from the modeling standpoint -- sending a
meaning to the production system implies that the production system
knows something about meanings. But it's the higher system that's
concerned with meanings, isn't it?
I'm thinking of the production system as a sort of transducer that turns
`meanings', some sort of internal structure, into an overt performance.
Perhaps we should pause to get this ironed out before proceeding.
Avery.Andrews@anu.edu.au