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Review of Smolensky and Legendre , The Harmonic Mind

The Harmonic Mind is a two-volume collection of 23 chapters authored by Smolensky, Legendre and their collaborators. Some of these are reprints or slight updates of previously published material, but approximately 3/4 of it has never appeared before. Every phonologist who takes at all seriously the notion that phonology is a branch of cognitive science should own a copy of this book. Smolensky and Legendre (v.1 p.1) present a view of cognition that incorporates two distinct, but related levels of formal description: " the continuous, numerical lower-level description of brain " , characterized in terms of a connectionist network, and " the discrete, structural, higher-level description of mind " , characterized in terms of Optimality Theory (OT). The depth and breadth of the presentation is awe-inspiring, and quite likely intimidating in some places for any single reader. In their preface, Smolensky and Legendre characterize the intended audience as interdisciplinary groups of researchers in cognitive science, and a joint reading of this book by such a group would undoubtedly be extremely educational for all. Bridges between the disciplines are built by careful exposition of the fundamental ideas, and the experts in each area will be satisfied by the the wealth of insights, and the formal precision of their presentation. Since phonology is a central focus, this book provides phonologists with a unique opportunity to engage with both the research and the researchers in other realms of cognitive science. There is furthermore much that phonologists (and other linguists) working on their own can gain from this book. The presentation of the overall cognitive framework in the first few chapters of Volume 1: Cognitive Architecture should be accessible to readers with little or no background in mathematics or computational modeling of cognition. This section should particularly appeal to phonologists curious about connectionism, but who are put off by reductionist applications that seek to eliminate the types of representations used in generative linguistics. Another key point of entry to the material in the first volume is Smolensky and Legen-dre's " Formalizing the Principles II: Optimization and Grammar " , which discusses the relationship between connectionist optimization, grammatical well-formedness, and formal language theory. A further point of access to the model of cognition for linguists is found in Smolensky's " Principle-Centered Connectionist and Generative-Linguistic Theories of Language " , in volume 2. The final paper in volume 1 " Optimality Theory: The Structure, Acquisition, and …