  Recurrent neural networks can learn complex transduction problems that
require maintaining and actively exploiting a memory of their inputs. Such
models traditionally consider memory and input-output functionalities
indissolubly entangled. We introduce a novel recurrent architecture based on
the conceptual separation between the functional input-output transformation
and the memory mechanism, showing how they can be implemented through different
neural components. By building on such conceptualization, we introduce the
Linear Memory Network, a recurrent model comprising a feedforward neural
network, realizing the non-linear functional transformation, and a linear
autoencoder for sequences, implementing the memory component. The resulting
architecture can be efficiently trained by building on closed-form solutions to
linear optimization problems. Further, by exploiting equivalence results
between feedforward and recurrent neural networks we devise a pretraining
schema for the proposed architecture. Experiments on polyphonic music datasets
show competitive results against gated recurrent networks and other state of
the art models.
