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Science 18 October 2002:
Vol. 298. no. 5593, pp. 553 - 554
DOI: 10.1126/science.1078094
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Perspectives

NEUROSCIENCE:
Does Grammar Start Where Statistics Stop?

Mark S. Seidenberg, Maryellen C. MacDonald, Jenny R. Saffran

How do we acquire language? Do we identify words in a stream of speech by identifying statistical regularities or by seeking grammatical structure? A new study of adults (Peña et al.) suggests that language acquisition involves a mixture of both types of learning. But, as Seidenberg and colleagues discuss in their Perspective, distinguishing between these two types of learning presents significant challenges.

The authors are in the Department of Psychology, University of Wisconsin, Madison, WI 53706, USA. E-mail: marks{at}lcnl.wisc.edu

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