Formal Theories of Language Acquisition: Practical and Theoretical Perspectives

Learning Theory is the study of systems that implement functions from evidential states to theories. The theoretical framework developed in the theory makes possible the comparison of classes of algorithms which embody distinct learning strategies along a variety of dimensions. Such comparisons yield valuable information to those concerned with inference problems in Cognitive Science and artificial Intelligence. The present paper employs the framework of Learning Theory to study the design specifications of inductive systems which are of interest in the domain of language acquisition.