It's an interesting constrained-writing exercise, but I think it demonstrates that the focus on syllable count is too simplistic as a heuristic for whether children are likely to understand a word (which in any case is context-dependent.) For example, the model inserts spaces to break up words that are more usually written without space "near by," or resorts to contorted expressions using somewhat obscure monosyllabic vocabulary ("a rule that makes moves in runs that beat a base more apt" is hardly a clear explanation of the REINFORCE algorithm.)
The CHILDES corpus might provide a more reasonable proxy for how people normally talk to children.
It's an interesting constrained-writing exercise, but I think it demonstrates that the focus on syllable count is too simplistic as a heuristic for whether children are likely to understand a word (which in any case is context-dependent.) For example, the model inserts spaces to break up words that are more usually written without space "near by," or resorts to contorted expressions using somewhat obscure monosyllabic vocabulary ("a rule that makes moves in runs that beat a base more apt" is hardly a clear explanation of the REINFORCE algorithm.)
The CHILDES corpus might provide a more reasonable proxy for how people normally talk to children.