Recurrent networks for structured data-- a unifying approach and

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Recurrentnetworksforstructureddata–aunifyingapproachanditsproperties

BarbaraHammerUniversit¨atOsnabr¨uck,DepartmentofMathematics/ComputerScience,D-49069Osnabr¨uck,Germany,e-mail:hammer@informatik.uni-osnabrueck.de

Keywords:Hybridsystems,recurrentnetworks,recursiveautoassociativemem-ory,holographicreducedrepresentation,approximationability,learnability

1IntroductionAnubiquitouscharacteristicofreal-lifedataiscompositionalityandstructure:writ-tenEnglishlanguageiscomposedofcharactersandafewadditionalsymbolswhicharecombinedtowordsandsentenceswithaspecificstructure;visualscenesdecomposeintosinglefigureswhicharegroupedtogether,eachfigurecharacter-izedbyacertainshape,texture,color,edges,etc.;computerprogramsdecomposeintofunctions,procedures,objects,methods,etc.Inallcases,essentialinforma-tionliesinthebasicprimitivesaswellastheirrespectiverolewithregardtothewholestructure.Thehumanbrain,beingahighlyefficientbiologicalneuralnet-work,obviouslyprocessesstructureddataeasily–wecanunderstandandproductspeech;wecanrecognizevisualscenes.Moreover,sincesyntheticdataproduced

PreprintsubmittedtoElsevierPreprint4December2001byhumansisoftenstructured–programs,websites,mathematicalformulas,forexample–itislikelythatthehumanbrainindeedusestheprinciplesofcomposi-tionalityandstructureforefficientprocessing.

Incontrast,standardartificialneuralnetworksasusedinpracticearemostlyre-strictedtoverysimpledata:theinputsoroutputs,respectively,usuallyconsistofsimplerealvectorsofaspecifiedfiniteandfixeddimension.Thatmeans,stan-dardartificialneuralnetworkscommonlyprocessandproduceonlyflatandun-structureddata.Sinceartificialneuralnetworksconstituteauniversalandefficientlearningmechanismwithsuccessfulapplicationsinvariousareasofapplication,theycouldprobablyaddavaluabletoolforareaswherestructuredorsymbolicdataareinvolved.Forthispurpose,ageneralizationsuchthatstructureddatacanbeprocessedautomaticallywithneuraltoolsisessential.Moreover,artificialneuralnetworkshavebeendesignedsuchthattheymimicimportantaspectsofbiologicalneuralnetworks.Henceitisveryinterestingtounderstandinwhichwayartificialneuralnetworkscanprocessandevolvesymbolicdatasothateventuallymorein-sightintobiologicalnetworksperformingthesetaskscanbegained.

Hencelotsofefforthasbeendoneinordertoextendconnectionisticsystemswithsymbolicaspects.Ofcourse,thereexistvariouspossibilities:ontheonehand,sym-bolicaspectsallowafurtherinsightintothewayinwhichneuralnetworksprocessdata.Theyconnectnetworkstothewayinwhichhumanexpertswouldformal-izetheirbehavior;ruleextractionorruleinsertionmechanismsenableustodealwithpriorexpertknowledgeinconnectionisticsystemsortotranslatetheconnec-tionisticbehaviortoabehaviorunderstandablebyexperts,respectively[7,46,47].Furthermore,subsymbolicprocessingonitsownisfacedtoseverelimitationsformodelingcomplexbehavior;commonlythesuccessofstandardneuralnetworksdependscruciallyonthewayofhowdataarepresentedinpracticalapplications.Rawdataaretobepreprocessedandappropriatefeatureextractionmechanismsaretobeaddedforexampleinimageclassification,timeseriesprediction,orlanguageprocessing[4,24,28].Hencestandardconnectionisticapplicationsusuallycontainsomepriorknowledgeorpreprocessinginordertobesuccessful.Forshort:sym-bolicmethodsandtheintegrationofstructureddataenabletheunderstandingofnetworkbehaviorandtheymayspeedupandboostneuralnetworktrainingconsid-erably.

Ontheotherhand,connectionisticsystemsprovideaverysimple,efficient,andproblem-independentwayoflearninganunknownbehaviorfromafinitesetofex-amplesandhencetheycouldaddavaluablelearningtooltosymbolicdomains.Concerningthestandardscenariowithrealvectors,theoreticalresultsensurethatneuralnetworkscanrepresent(almost)anyunknownbehaviorwithanadequateneuralarchitecture;theyareuniversalapproximatorsasshownin[19]asanexam-ple.Furthermore,theunknownbehaviorcanbelearnedfromafinitesetofexam-ples.Thenecessarysizeofthetrainingsetdependsonthenetworkarchitectureandtherequiredaccuracy;thetheoreticalbackgroundisprovidedbyso-calledstatisti-

2callearningtheory[1,2,49].Assumedconnectionisticmethodsandtherespectivetheoreticalguaranteescouldbeestablishedforsymbolicdomains,too,theycouldspeedupsymbolicprocessingofdataandtheycouldmodelbehaviorforwhichapreciselogicaldescriptionishardtoobtain.Moreover,thestructurewhichispro-videdbythesymbolicdatamayallowtointerpretthebehaviorofthenetwork.Inaddition,datamayproposeanadequaterepresentationoftheknowledgelearnedbythenetwork[29,45].Asaconsequence,neuralmethodscouldaddanefficientandautomaticlearningtooltoclassicalsymbolicmethods.