SCXT 350

Final Exam Review

Disclaimer: I have attempted to be comprehensive in the following, but important items may have been omitted by mistake. If you see such an omission, please let me know, but you are responsible for all of the lecture material to date.

The final  exam will be held at 4:00 PM on Wednesday, Dec. 18.  It will be a comprehensive exam.  In your review, you should examine:

Since the last exam, we have considered connectionist architectures and language.  You should be able to say what characterizes connectionist architectures and contrast the connectionist approach to the symbolic approach.  How is knowledge stored in each approach?  How is it manipulated?  What might be some of the advantages and disadvantages of each?

Be able to give a description of a child's acquisition of language together with some of the important features of that acquisition.  What is required for acquisition.  In general, what are some of the things that make language understanding and production difficult?  What is the role of knowledge, and what sort of knowledge is required?  How do we resolve ambiguity?

The above should not necessarily be viewed as possible exam questions (although some of them may be), but rather as notes to guide you in your review of the material.  In particular, class discussion on any of these should not be considered as model answers to any question that can be memorized and then produced on the exam.  These notes are guides only.

There may be more, but I think that's it. If you have any questions, please ask.