Authors:

MARSLEN-WILSON, W.D.

Reference:

Year of publication:

2000

CBU number:

4175

Abstract:

The properties of lexical representations and processes have become a focal point for a wide-ranging debate in the cognitive sciences about the nature of mental computation. Does this depend on internally represented systems of rules, expressed as strings of symbols with a syntax, as opposed to more distributed neural systems, operating subsymbolically and without syntax? Questions have focused in particular on the English past tense, because it offers an unusually clear contrast between a potentially rule-based system and an unpredictable and idiosyncratic set of irregular forms. We review here current evidence for parallels and divergences in the cognitive and neural systems underlying the generation and perception of regular as opposed to irregular forms, and argue that a picture is beginning to emerge where regular inflected forms seem to involve special combinatorial processes, subserved by distinct, neurologically dissociable underlying systems