Rules and maps II : recent progress in connectionist symbol processing

This report contains three papers on symbol processing in connectionist networks. The first two, "A Computational Basis for Phonology" and "Rationale for a 'Many Maps' Phonology Machine," present the latest results of our ongoing project to develop a connectionist explanation for the regularities and peculiarities of human phonological behavior. The third paper, "Rule Representations in a Connectionist Chunker," introduces a new rule chunking architecture based on competitive learning, and compares its performance with that of a backpropagation-bascd chunker. Earlier work in these areas was described in report CMU-CS-89-158, "Rules and Maps in Connectionist S ymbol Processing.'' This work was supported by a contract from Hughes Research Laboratories, by National Science Foundation grant EET-8716324, and by the Office of Naval Research under contract number N00014-86-K-0678. The views and conclusions contained in this document are those of the authors and should not be interpreted as representing the official policies, either expressed or implied, of Hughes Research Laboratories, the National Science Foundation, the Office of Naval Research, or the U.S. Government.