Harmonic Grammar

Harmonic Grammar is a linguistic model proposed by Geraldine Legendre, Yoshiro Miyata, and Paul Smolensky in 1990. It is a connectionist approach to modeling linguistic well-formedness. More recently, Harmonic Grammar has been used to refer more generally to models of language that use weighted constraints, including ones that are not explicitly connectionist – see e.g. Pater (2009) and Potts et al. (2010).

Related

• Optimality Theory

Bibliography

• Keller, Frank. (2000). Gradience in grammar: Experimental and computational aspects of degrees of grammaticality. (Doctoral dissertation, University of Edinburgh). (Online: homepages.inf.ed.ac.uk/keller/papers/phd.html).
• Keller, Frank. (2006). Linear Optimality Theory as a model of gradience in grammar. In G. Fanselow, C. Fery, R. Vogel, & M. Schlesewsky (Eds.), Gradience in grammar: Generative perspectives. Oxford: Oxford University Press. (Online: homepages.inf.ed.ac.uk/keller/papers/oup06a.html).
• Legendre, Géraldine; Miyata, Yoshiro; & Smolensky, Paul. (1990). Can connectionism contribute to syntax?: Harmonic Grammar, with an application. In M. Ziolkowski, M. Noske, & K. Deaton (Eds.), Proceedings of the 26th regional meeting of the Chicago Linguistic Society (pp. 237–252). Chicago: Chicago Linguistic Society.
• Legendre, Géraldine; Miyata, Yoshiro; & Smolensky, Paul. (1990). Can connectionism contribute to syntax?: Harmonic grammar, with an application. Report CU-CS-485-90. Computer Science Department, University of Colorado at Boulder. (Online: www.cs.colorado.edu/department/publications/reports/docs/CU-CS-485-90.pdf.)
• Legendre, Géraldine; Miyata, Yoshiro; & Smolensky, Paul. (1990). Harmonic Grammar: A formal multi-level connectionist theory of linguistic well-formedness: Theoretical foundations. In Proceedings of the twelfth annual conference of the Cognitive Science Society (pp. 388–395). Cambridge, MA: Lawrence Erlbaum.
• Legendre, Géraldine; Miyata, Yoshiro; & Smolensky, Paul. (1990). Harmonic Grammar: A formal multi-level connectionist theory of linguistic well-formedness: Theoretical foundations. Report CU-CS-465-90. Computer Science Department, University of Colorado at Boulder. (Online: www.cs.colorado.edu/department/publications/reports/docs/CU-CS-465-90.pdf.)
• Legendre, Géraldine; Miyata, Yoshiro; & Smolensky, Paul. (1990). Harmonic Grammar: A formal multi-level connectionist theory of linguistic well-formedness: An application. In Proceedings of the twelfth annual conference of the Cognitive Science Society (pp. 884–891). Cambridge, MA: Lawrence Erlbaum.
• Legendre, Géraldine; Miyata, Yoshiro; & Smolensky, Paul. (1990). Harmonic Grammar: A formal multi-level connectionist theory of linguistic well-formedness: An application. Report CU-CS-464-90; ICS technical report 90-4. Computer Science Department, University of Colorado at Boulder. (Online: www.cs.colorado.edu/department/publications/reports/docs/CU-CS-464-90.pdf.)
• Legendre, Géraldine; Miyata, Yoshiro; & Smolensky, Paul. (1991). Distributed recursive structure processing. Report CU-CS-514-91. Computer Science Department, University of Colorado at Boulder. (Online: www.cs.colorado.edu/department/publications/reports/docs/CU-CS-514-91.pdf.)
• Legendre, Géraldine; Miyata, Yoshiro; & Smolensky, Paul. (1991). Unifying syntactic and semantic approaches to unaccusativity: A connectionist approach. In Proceedings of the 17th Annual Meeting of the Berkeley Linguistics Society (pp. 388–395). Berkeley. (Online: www.cs.colorado.edu/department/publications/reports/docs/CU-CS-532-91.pdf).
• Legendre, Géraldine; Sorace, Antonella; & Smolensky, Paul. (2006). The Optimality Theory–Harmonic Grammar connection. In P. Smolensky & G. Legendre (Eds.), The harmonic mind: From neural computation to Optimality-Theoretic grammar (pp. 339–402). (Online: uit.no/getfile.php?PageId=874&FileId=187).
• Pater, Joe. (2009). Weighted Constraints in Generative Linguistics. Cognitive Science 33: 999-1035.
• Potts, Christopher, Joe Pater, Karen Jesney, Rajesh Bhatt and Michael Becker. (2010). Harmonic Grammar with Linear Programming: From linear systems to linguistic typology. Phonology 27: 77-117.
• Prince, Alan. (2002). Anything goes. In ed. T. Honma, M. Okazaki, T. Tabata, & S. Tanaka (Eds.), New century of phonology and phonological theory (pp. 66–90). Tokyo: Kaitakusha. (Online: roa.rutgers.edu/view.php3?id=697).
• Prince, Alan; & Smolensky, Paul. (1991). Connectionism and harmony theory in linguistics. Report CU-CS-600-92. Computer Science Department, University of Colorado at Boulder. (Online: www.cs.colorado.edu/department/publications/reports/docs/CU-CS-533-91.pdf.)
• Prince, Alan; & Smolensky, Paul. (1993). Optimality Theory: Constraint interaction in generative grammar. RuCCS Technical Report 2, Rutgers University. Piscateway, NJ: Rutgers University Center for Cognitive Science. (Revised version published 2004). (Online: roa.rutgers.edu/view.php3?id=845).
• Smolensky, Paul. (1988). On the proper treatment of connectionism. The Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 11, 1-23.
• Smolensky, Paul. (1990). Tensor product variable binding and the representation of symbolic structures in connectionist networks. Artificial Intelligence, 46, 159-216.
• Smolensky, Paul; & Legendre, Géraldine. (2006). The harmonic mind: From neural computation to Optimality-Theoretic grammar (Vols. 1-2). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
• Smolensky, Paul; Legendre, Géraldine; & Miyata, Yoshiro. (1992). Principles for an integrated connectionist/symbolic theory of higher cognition. Report CU-CS-600-92. Computer Science Department, University of Colorado at Boulder.
• Smolensky, Paul; Legendre, Géraldine; & Miyata, Yoshiro. (1992). Integrating connectionist and symbolic computation for the theory of language. Computer Science Department Report CU-CS-628-92; Institute of Cognitive Science Report 92-16. Computer Science Department, University of Colorado at Boulder. (Online: www.cs.colorado.edu/department/publications/reports/docs/CU-CS-628-92.pdf).
• Smolensky, Paul; Legendre, Géraldine; & Miyata, Yoshiro. (1993). Integrating connectionist and symbolic computation for the theory of language. Current Science, 64, 381–391.
• Tesar, Bruce. (2007). A comparison of lexicographic and linear numeric optimization using violation difference ratios. Rutgers University. (Online: roa.rutgers.edu/view.php3?id=1351).