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<Paper uid="P82-1032">
  <Title>A Model of Early Syntactic Development</Title>
  <Section position="12" start_page="150" end_page="150" type="concl">
    <SectionTitle>
7. Conclusions
</SectionTitle>
    <Paragraph position="0"> In conclusion, AMBER provides explanations for severat important phenomena observed in children's early speech. The system accounts for the one-word stage and the child's transition to the telegraphic stage. Although AMBER and children eventually learn to produce all relevant content words, both pass through a stage where some are omitted. Because it learns sets of conditions one at a time, the discrimination process explains the order in which grammatical morphemes are mastered.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="1"> Finally, AMBER learns gradually enough to provide a plausible explanation of the incremental nature of first language acquisition. Thus the system constitutes a significant addition to our knowledge of syntactic development.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="2"> Of course, AMBER has a number of limitations that should be addressed in future research. Successive versions should be able to learn the connections between words and concepts, should reduce the distinction between content words and morphemes, and should be able to master irregular constructions. Moreover, they should require less knowledge of the language learning task, and rely more of domain-independent learning mechanisms such as discrimination. But despite its limitations, the current version of AMBER has proven itself quite useful in clarifying the incremental nature of language acquisition, and future models promise to further our understanding of this complex process.</Paragraph>
  </Section>
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