The book describes a connectionist natural language processing system that is designed to process script-based narratives: DISCERN (DIstributed SCript processing and Episodic memoRy Network). At first blush, scripts and a connectionist network might look like a strange association. Scripts, which have various 'slots', or 'roles,' for stereotypical events and objects involved in routine activities, are used as data structures by Schank and Abelson (1977) because of their psychological plausibility in organizing experiences. 'Structures', the Achilles' heel for connectionism in natural language. The lack of internal structures in connectionist networks results in their incompetence in handling natural language which is systematic and productive, as Fodor and Pylyshyn (1988) emphatically argue. Furthermore, the fact that natural language is sequential puts another onerous burden on homogeneous connectionist networks which are basically simple pattern matching mechanisms.
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