Language acquisition in the MDL framework

Abstract

The Minimum Description Length (MDL) principle provides guidance to the fundamental question of determining what a given set of observed data tells us about the underlying data generating machinery. Hence, in the broadest sense the MDL principle relates to the central question of all science, although its most useful applications have been to the more practical problem of tting statistical models to data. In this article, we review the MDL principle and demonstrate how it may be pro tably applied to the logical problem of language acquisition.