The proposed research is concerned with language modeling and handwriting. The goal of the language modeling research is to represent the computations performed in the comprehension, production, and acquisition of human languages. Computations may be described at various levels of abstraction: as a sequence of state transitions (least abstract), as an algorithm (more abstract), and as a computational problem (most abstract). The first step in the proposed research is to characterize the three central computations of human language (comprehension, production, and acquisition) at the highest level of abstraction, as computational problems. Each such problem statement is a computational theory of a portion of language. The total sum of all such problem statements is a comprehensive computational theory of human language. The goal of the handwriting recognition research is to accurately model the human handwriting process. Such a model is, crucial to improving current handwriting recognition technology. To accomplish this, the statistical constraint inherent in handwriting, including physical constraints arising from the biomechanics of the pen/hand system, motor-perceptual constraints arising from the shared desire to communicate efficiently and reliably, and constraint due to the ad-hoc convention of handwriting, such as the chosen alphabet and language is explicitly modeled. //
