Connectionist natural language processing : The state of the artMorten

This Special Issue on Connectionist Models of Human Language Processing provides an opportunity for an appraisal both of speciic connectionist models and of the status and utility of connectionist models of language in general. This introduction provides the background for the papers in the Special Issue. The development of connectionist models of language is traced, from their intellectual origins, to the state of current research. Key themes that arise throughout diierent areas of connectionist psycholinguistics are highlighted , and recent developments in speech processing, morphology, sentence processing, language production, and reading are described. We argue that connectionist psycholinguistics has already had a signiicant impact on the psychology of language, and that connectionist models are likely to have an important innuence on future research.