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Parsimony and the lexicon

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 April 2026

John Macnamara
John Macnamara*
Affiliation:
McGill University
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Abstract

Two systems which attempt to describe the structure of the English lexicon have been presented by Katz, Fodor, and Postal (hereafter KFP) and by Quillian. It is argued that the KFP model fails because it mistakenly aims at parsimonious storage of information in the lexicon, and that Quillian's fails because it carries insufficient information and places inadequate limits on the recall of information. What is needed, then, is a lexicon which provides for almost unlimited information storage, but permits parsimonious recall.

Information

Type
Research Article
Information
Language , Volume 47 , Issue 2 , June 1971, pp. 359 - 374
Copyright
Copyright © 1971 Linguistic Society of America

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