Rational versus Empiricist Approaches to Language I
Question: What prior knowledge should be built into our models of NLP?
Rationalist Answer: A significant part of the knowledge in the human mind is not derived by the senses but is fixed in advance, presumably by genetic inheritance (Chomsky: poverty of the stimulus).
Empiricist Answer: The brain is able to perform association, pattern recognition, and generalization and, thus, the structures of Natural Language can be learned.