How do we produce the past tenses of verbs? For the last 20 years this question has been the focal domain for conflicting theories of language, knowledge representation, and cognitive processing. On one side of the debate have been similarity-based or single-route approaches that propose that all past tenses are formed simply through phonological analogies to existing past tenses stored in memory. On the other side of the debate are rule-based or dual-route approaches which agree that phonological analogy is important for producing irregular past tenses (e.g., think-->thought), but argue that regular past tenses (e.g., walk-->walked) are generated via a +ed rule and that a principled account of regular inflection can only be given by recourse to explicit rules. This debate has become a crucial battleground for arguments concerning the necessity and importance of abstract mental rules, embracing not only language processing, but also the of nature cognition itself. However, in centering on the roles of phonological similarity and rules, the past tense debate has largely ignored the possible role of semantics in determining inflection. This paper presents five studies that demonstrate a striking and decisive role of semantic similarity in inflection. In fact, semantic factors appear to be more important in inflection than the grammatical considerations put forward by the dual-route account. Further, these new findings provide a new way of discriminating between the claims of single-route (similarity-based) and dual-route (rule-based) approaches. It appears that inflection is carried out through analogical reminding based on semantic and phonological similarity and that a rule-based route is not necessary to account for past tense inflection.

中文翻译：

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意义在屈折中的作用：为什么过去时不需要规则

我们如何产生动词的过去时态？在过去的 20 年里，这个问题一直是语言、知识表示和认知加工等相互矛盾的理论的焦点领域。争论的一方面是基于相似性或单一途径的方法，这些方法提出所有过去时都是通过与内存中存储的现有过去时进行语音类比而形成的。争论的另一方面是基于规则或双路径的方法，它们同意音系类比对于产生不规则的过去时（例如，think-->thought）很重要，但认为规则的过去时（例如，walk--） >walked) 是通过 +ed 规则生成的，并且只能通过求助于明确的规则来给出对规则屈折的原则性解释。这场辩论已成为有关抽象心理规则的必要性和重要性的争论的关键战场，不仅包括语言处理，还包括自然认知本身。然而，围绕音韵相似性和规则的作用，过去的时态辩论在很大程度上忽略了语义在决定屈折变化方面的可能作用。本文提出了五项研究，证明语义相似性在屈折变化中的显着和决定性作用。事实上，语义因素在屈折变化中似乎比双路由帐户提出的语法考虑更重要。此外，这些新发现提供了一种区分单路径（基于相似性）和双路径（基于规则）方法的主张的新方法。