Integration of language and cognition at pre-conceptual level

• Main Author: Perlovsky, L.I.
• Format: Conference Proceeding
• Language: English
• Subjects: Artificial intelligence; Cognition; Computational complexity; Computational linguistics; Fuzzy logic; Learning; Mathematical model; Search engines; Telephony
• DOI: 10.1109/KIMAS.2003.1245058

We discuss mathematical models of the mechanisms that the mind can use for combining language and cognition. I address the problem of concurrent language acquisition and conceptual learning. How a child can learn so fast? In concurrent learning of language and cognitive structures, language helps learning about objects in surrounding world and vice versa, which might explain why we can learn to recognize objects and words, but cannot remember a yellow page telephone book. The proposed theory addresses cognitive mechanisms of concepts, emotions, and goals and relates them to thought processes in which an event (in the outside world, or inside the mind) is understood as a concept. Learning language at the same time helps in this processes. The described framework can use various language models described in cognitive and computational linguistic literature, while avoiding combinatorial computational complexity that has been the nemesis of artificial intelligence and computational linguistics. The combinatorial complexity is avoided by using a new type of logic, dynamic logic, that unifies fuzzy logic and formal logic. The postulated mechanisms of integration of language and cognition at a pre-conceptual level, where conceptual and emotional contents are not differentiated might be interesting for theoretical linguistics and for practical development of understanding-based search engines.