T begin with, I would like to assert that computational linguistics (henceforth CL), despite its qualifying adjective, has to do with human behavior and, in particular, with that subset of human behavioral patterns that we study in linguistics. In other words, one of the tasks of c L as a science is to explain human behavior insofar as it avails itself of the possibilities inherent in man's faculty of speech. In this sense, CL and linguistics proper both pursue the same aim. However, there are differences, as we will see shortly; for the moment, let us just establish that CL can be considered as a subfield of linguistics and leave the delineation of the boundaries for later. An important notion in behavioral sciences is that of a model as a set of hypotheses and empirical assumptions leading to certain testable conclusions called predictions (cf., e.g., Braithwaite 1968, Saumjan 1966). I would like to call this kind of model the descriptive one. "Descriptive" here is not taken in the sense that Chomsky distinguishes descriptive adequacy from explanatory adequacy; indeed, the function of the descriptive model is to explain, as will become clear below. However, there is another respect in which the descriptive model reminds one of some of the characteristics attributed to Chomskyan models: it need not be (and should not be) considered a "faithful" reproduction of reality in the sense that to each part of the model there corresponds, by some kind of isomorphic mapping, a particular chunk of "real" life. In other words, this descriptive kind of model does not attempt to imitate the behavior of its descriptum. The other kind of model I propose to call the simulative one. As the name indicates, we are dealing with a conscious effort to picture, point by point, the activities that we want to describe. Of course, the simulative model, in order to be scientifically interesting, must attempt to explain; a machina loquax, to use Ceccato's expression (1967), is no good if there is a deus in machina. Although the idea of building homunculi, robots, and whatever else they are called is not exactly a new one, the advent of the computer made it possible to conduct these experiments on a hitherto unknown scale, both with regard to dimensions and to exactitude. In fact, one of the popular views of the computer is exactly that: a man-like machine. Interestingly, the fears connected with this