scholarly journals Young minds’ quest for regularity: Evidence from the Turkish causative

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-28
Author(s):  
Mine NAKİPOĞLU ◽  
Berna A. UZUNDAG ◽  
Özge SARIGÜL
Keyword(s):  
Statistical Learning ◽  
Negative Correlation ◽  
Production Task ◽  
Rule Based ◽  
Irregular Distribution ◽  
Token Frequency ◽  
Early Acquisition ◽  
Type Frequency ◽  
Competing Hypotheses ◽  
Morphology Learning

Abstract Children's remarkable ability to generalize beyond the input and the resulting overregularizations/ irregularizations provide a platform for a discussion of whether morphology learning uses analogy-based, rule-based, or statistical learning procedures. The present study, testing 115 children (aged 3 to 10) on an elicited production task, investigated the acquisition of the irregular distribution in the Turkish causative. Results showed that in early acquisition, to pin down the four causative suffixes, children engaged in comparisons between analogous exemplars. Thereafter to tackle the irregularity in two of the suffixes, children entertained competing hypotheses that yielded overregularizations and irregularizations. Overregularizations were instances of abstraction across the input based on type frequency; irregularizations were attempts to default to erroneous micro-generalizations. Negative correlation between errors and verb frequency suggested that recovery from errors was sensitive to token frequency. The overgeneralize-then-recover pattern that emerged in the acquisition of causative supported an integrated account of the roles of analogy, abstraction, and frequency in morphology learning.

scholarly journals Inflectional Change Patterns in Arabic

2013 ◽  
Vol 17 (2) ◽  
pp. 203-227
Author(s):  
Maisoun Abu Joudeh ◽  
Sabri Al-Shboul
Keyword(s):  
Inflectional Morphology ◽  
Jordanian Arabic ◽  
Verbal Nouns ◽  
Rule Based ◽  
Loan Words ◽  
Mechanism Model ◽  
Single Mechanism ◽  
Type Frequency ◽  
Schema Model ◽  
Dual Mechanism

Abstract Most approaches to inflectional morphology propose a single-default representation. This research on Jordanian Arabic offers an analysis having more than one default inflection. This is accomplished by showing that unlike previous morphological accounts like the single-mechanism model, dual-mechanism model, and the schema model (cf. Pinker, 1990; Rumelhart & McClelland, 1986; and Bybee, 1985), the current research relies upon the ‘openness’ mechanism to define defaultness. Openness is thus defined as the ability of the inflectional process to accept new forms into a language. The corpus used in this research contains diminutives, verbal nouns, derivatives, and loan words used in JA. Other defining factors are modified in this research, such as regularity (rule-based mechanism) and productivity (type frequency). The findings of this research indicate that there are two possible defaults in Jordanian Arabic ordered in terms of openness: the sound feminine plural and the iambic broken plural. The findings have the implication that a language’s grammar can have a multi-default system.

scholarly journals Neurophysiological coding of statistical and deterministic rule information

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ádám Takács ◽  
Andrea Kóbor ◽  
Zsófia Kardos ◽  
Karolina Janacsek ◽  
Kata Horváth ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Statistical Learning ◽  
Visual Information ◽  
Time Window ◽  
Learning Mechanisms ◽  
Decomposition Approach ◽  
Rule Based ◽  
Parallel Learning ◽  
Time Sensitivity ◽  
Types Of Information ◽  
The Right

AbstractHumans are capable of acquiring multiple types of information presented in the same visual information stream. It has been suggested that at least two parallel learning processes are important during learning of sequential patterns – statistical learning and rule-based learning. Yet, the neurophysiological underpinnings of these parallel learning mechanisms in visual sequences are not fully understood. To differentiate between the simultaneous mechanisms at the single trial level, we apply a temporal EEG signal decomposition approach together with sLORETA source localization method to delineate whether distinct statistical and rule-based learning codes can be distinguished in EEG data and can be related to distinct functional neuroanatomical structures. We demonstrate that concomitant but distinct aspects of information coded in the N2 time window play a role in these mechanisms: mismatch detection and response control underlie statistical learning and rule-based learning, respectively, albeit with different levels of time-sensitivity. Moreover, the effects of the two learning mechanisms in the different temporally decomposed clusters of neural activity also differed from each other in neural sources. Importantly, the right inferior frontal cortex (BA44) was specifically implicated in statistical learning, confirming its role in the acquisition of transitional probabilities. In contrast, rule-based learning was associated with the prefrontal gyrus (BA6). The results show how simultaneous learning mechanisms operate at the neurophysiological level and are orchestrated by distinct prefrontal cortical areas. The current findings deepen our understanding on the mechanisms how humans are capable of learning multiple types of information from the same stimulus stream in a parallel fashion.

Individuals With Congenital Amusia Show Degraded Speech Perception but Preserved Statistical Learning for Tone Languages

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-17
Author(s):  
Jiaqiang Zhu ◽  
Xiaoxiang Chen ◽  
Fei Chen ◽  
Seth Wiener
Keyword(s):  
Speech Perception ◽  
Statistical Learning ◽  
High Frequency ◽  
Correct Word ◽  
Token Frequency ◽  
Congenital Amusia ◽  
Rehabilitation Programs ◽  
Degraded Speech ◽  
Statistical Regularities ◽  
Gating Paradigm

Purpose: Individuals with congenital amusia exhibit degraded speech perception. This study examined whether adult Chinese Mandarin listeners with amusia were still able to extract the statistical regularities of Mandarin speech sounds, despite their degraded speech perception. Method: Using the gating paradigm with monosyllabic syllable–tone words, we tested 19 Mandarin-speaking amusics and 19 musically intact controls. Listeners heard increasingly longer fragments of the acoustic signal across eight duration-blocked gates. The stimuli varied in syllable token frequency and syllable–tone co-occurrence probability. The correct syllable–tone word, correct syllable-only, correct tone-only, and correct syllable–incorrect tone responses were compared respectively between the two groups using mixed-effects models. Results: Amusics were less accurate than controls in terms of the correct word, correct syllable-only, and correct tone-only responses. Amusics, however, showed consistent patterns of top-down processing, as indicated by more accurate responses to high-frequency syllables, high-probability tones, and tone errors all in manners similar to those of the control listeners. Conclusions: Amusics are able to learn syllable and tone statistical regularities from the language input. This extends previous work by showing that amusics can track phonological segment and pitch cues despite their degraded speech perception. The observed speech deficits in amusics are therefore not due to an abnormal statistical learning mechanism. These results support rehabilitation programs aimed at improving amusics' sensitivity to pitch.

scholarly journals Measuring analyticity and syntheticity in creoles

2014 ◽  
Vol 29 (1) ◽  
pp. 49-85 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jeff Siegel ◽  
Benedikt Szmrecsanyi ◽  
Bernd Kortmann
Keyword(s):  
Hong Kong ◽  
American English ◽  
The Other ◽  
Word Class ◽  
Language Varieties ◽  
Token Frequency ◽  
Quantitative Results ◽  
Type Frequency ◽  
Hong Kong English

Creoles (here including expanded pidgins) are commonly viewed as being more analytic than their lexifiers and other languages in terms of grammatical marking. The purpose of the study reported in this article was to examine the validity of this view by measuring the frequency of analytic (and synthetic) markers in corpora of two different English-lexified creoles — Tok Pisin and Hawai‘i Creole — and comparing the quantitative results with those for other language varieties. To measure token frequency, 1,000 randomly selected words in each creole corpus were tagged with regard to word class, and categorized as being analytic, synthetic, both analytic and synthetic, or purely lexical. On this basis, an Analyticity Index and a Syntheticity Index were calculated. These were first compared to indices for other languages and then to L1 varieties of English (e.g. standard British and American English and British dialects) and L2 varieties (e.g. Singapore English and Hong Kong English). Type frequency was determined by the size of the inventories of analytic and synthetic markers used in the corpora, and similar comparisons were made. The results show that in terms of both token and type frequency of grammatical markers, the creoles are not more analytic than the other varieties. However, they are significantly less synthetic, resulting in much higher ratios of analytic to synthetic marking. An explanation for this finding relates to the particular strategy for grammatical expansion used by individuals when the creoles were developing.

A Dense Corpus Study of Past Tense and Plural Overregularization in English

2004 ◽  
Vol 47 (6) ◽  
pp. 1319-1333 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert J. C. Maslen ◽  
Anna L. Theakston ◽  
Elena V. M. Lieven ◽  
Michael Tomasello
Keyword(s):  
Negative Correlation ◽  
Initial Period ◽  
Past Tense ◽  
Strong Negative Correlation ◽  
Retrieval Failure ◽  
Corpus Study ◽  
Frequency Effects ◽  
Token Frequency ◽  
The Face ◽  
Child Speech

In the "blocking-and-retrieval-failure" account of overregularization (OR; G. F. Marcus, 1995; G. F. Marcus et al., 1992), the claim that a symbolic rule generates regular inflection is founded on pervasively low past tense OR rates and the lack of a substantive difference between past tense and plural OR rates. Evidence of extended periods of OR in the face of substantial correct input (M. Maratsos, 2000) and of an initial period in which nouns are more likely to be overregularized than verbs (V. A. Marchman, K. Plunkett, & J. Goodman, 1997) casts doubt on the blocking account and suggests instead an interplay between type and token frequency effects that is more consistent with usage-based approaches (e.g., J. Bybee, 1995; K. Köpcke, 1998; K. Plunkett & V. Marchman, 1993). However, previous naturalistic studies have been limited by data that account for only 1–2% of child speech. The current study reports analyses of verb and noun ORs in a dense naturalistic corpus (1 child, 2;00.12–3;11.06 [years;months.days]) that captures 8–10% of child speech and input. The data show (a) a marked difference in verb and noun OR rates; (b) evidence of a relationship between relative regular/irregular type frequencies and the onset and rate of past tense and plural ORs; (c) substantial OR periods for some verbs and nouns despite hundreds of correct tokens in child speech and input; and (d) a strong negative correlation between input token frequencies and OR rates for verbs and nouns. The implications of these findings for blocking and other accounts of OR are discussed.

The locative alternation in verb-framed vs. satellite-framed languages

2014 ◽  
Vol 38 (4) ◽  
pp. 864-895 ◽  
Author(s):  
Wojciech Lewandowski
Keyword(s):  
Comparative Analysis ◽  
Argument Structure ◽  
Corpus Study ◽  
Token Frequency ◽  
Locative Alternation ◽  
Change Of State ◽  
Type Frequency ◽  
Verb Meaning

I propose a comparative analysis of the locative alternation in Polish and Spanish. I adopt a constructional theory of argument structure (Goldberg (1995)), according to which the locative alternation is an epiphenomenon of the compatibility of a single verb meaning with two different constructions: the caused-motion construction and the causative + with adjunct construction. As claimed by Pinker (1989), a verb must specify a manner of motion from which a particular change of state can be obtained in order to be able to appear in both constructional schemas. However, I show through a corpus study that the compatibility between verbal and constructional meaning is further restricted by Talmy’s (1985, 1991, 2000) distinction between verb-framed and satellite-framed languages. In particular, Talmy’s lexicalization patterns theory systematically explains why both the token frequency and the type frequency of the alternating verbs are considerably higher in Polish than in Spanish.

scholarly journals Contributions of phonetic token variability and word-type frequency to phonological representations

2010 ◽  
Vol 38 (5) ◽  
pp. 951-978 ◽  
Author(s):  
PETER RICHTSMEIER ◽  
LOUANN GERKEN ◽  
DIANE OHALA
Keyword(s):  
Word Type ◽  
Talker Variability ◽  
Phonological Representations ◽  
Token Frequency ◽  
Abstract Entities ◽  
Ambient Language ◽  
Language Frequency ◽  
Series Of Experiments ◽  
Type Frequency ◽  
Phonotactic Learning

ABSTRACTThe experiments here build on the widely reported finding that children are most accurate when producing phonotactic sequences with high ambient-language frequency. What remains controversial is a description of the input that children must be tracking for this effect to arise. We present a series of experiments that compare two ambient-language properties, token and type frequency, as they contribute to phonotactic learning. Token frequency is the raw number of exposures children have to a particular pattern; type frequency refers to a count of abstract entities, such as unique words. Our results suggest that children's production accuracy is most sensitive to a combination of type and token frequency: children were able to generalize a target phonotactic sequence to a new word when familiarized with multiple word-types across tokens from multiple talkers, but not when presented with either word-types with no talker variability or multiple talker-tokens of a single word.

scholarly journals Bilingual children's production of regular and irregular past tense morphology

2014 ◽  
Vol 18 (2) ◽  
pp. 290-303 ◽  
Author(s):  
JUDITH RISPENS ◽  
ELISE DE BREE
Keyword(s):  
Learning Strategy ◽  
Bilingual Children ◽  
Past Tense ◽  
Token Frequency ◽  
The Past ◽  
Type Frequency ◽  
The Difference ◽  
Past Tenses

This study examined the production of the Dutch past tense in Dutch–Hebrew bilingual children and investigated the effect of type of past tense allomorph (de versus te) and token frequency on productions of the past tense. Seven-year-old bilingual children (n=11) were compared with monolingual children: age-matched (n=30) and younger vocabulary-matched (n=21). Accuracy of regular and novel past tense was similar for the bilingual and monolingual groups, but the former group was worse on irregular past tense than the age-matched monolingual peers. All three groups showed effects of type frequency: te past tenses were more accurate than de. The difference between the bilingual and monolingual children surfaces in the extent of the effect: for the bilingual children it was most pronounced in verbs with low token frequency and novel verbs. Results are interpreted as stemming from a learning strategy or from phonological transfer from the Hebrew morphosyntactic system.

scholarly journals A Corpus-based Case Study on the POS Tagging of Self-referential Lexemes in the Contemporary Chinese Dictionary

2020 ◽  
Vol 10 (8) ◽  
pp. 879
Author(s):  
Jun Zhang ◽  
Heng Zhang
Keyword(s):  
The Self ◽  
Word Class ◽  
Pos Tagging ◽  
Token Frequency ◽  
Categorization Theory ◽  
Type Frequency ◽  
Set Up ◽  
Contemporary Chinese ◽  
Grammatical Functions

The POS tagging in the 5th edition of the CCD has been revised in the 6th and the 7th editions. The noun POS of most sports and science lexemes are deleted, and their senses of noun (self-referential senses) are included into verbs. However, most of these lexemes can be used as nouns intuitively, and their noun POS and senses should exist. Based on the grammatical functions of words (Xv & Tang, 2006) and the two-level word class categorization theory (Wang, 2014), this study conducts a corpus-based case study of a science lexeme “guina”. The result shows that “guina” not only has self-referential usage, but has high token frequency, with 133 occurrences accounting for 42.8% of the total usages, and rich type frequency widely distributed in “guina + (of) + NP “,” NP + (of) + guina” and “VP + guina”, which conforms to the criterion of conventionalization. Therefore, it is necessary to tag the noun POS and to set up the self-referential sense for “guina”. This research has an implication for solving the POS tagging problem of self-referential lexemes in the CCD.

ANGER metaphors in American English and Kabyle

2016 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
pp. 216-252
Author(s):  
Sadia Belkhir
Keyword(s):  
Cognitive Linguistics ◽  
American English ◽  
Prototype Model ◽  
Sociocultural Influences ◽  
Token Frequency ◽  
Language Variety ◽  
Type Frequency ◽  
Human Thinking ◽  
And Control ◽  
Domain Concept

The position standardly held in cognitive linguistics is that anger is an emotion concept that communicates about human thinking and which is instantiated in language in ways that are often metaphorically, systematically, and conceptually structured. The container metaphor is claimed to be near-universal (Kövecses 2000), but also subject to variation (Kövecses 2005). Variation in metaphor frequencies across languages has also been investigated (Boers & Demecheleer 1997; Boers 1999; Deignan 2003; Kövecses et al. 2015). This article reports a corpus-based contrastive investigation of anger metaphors in American English and Kabyle — a Tamazight language variety spoken in the northern part of Algeria. Its main objective is to contrast these metaphors and try to find out the most used ones in these languages through a qualitative and quantitative analysis of the token frequency of linguistic expressions belonging to each of the conceptual metaphors, the type frequency of their linguistic realizations, and the number of their mappings. Aspects of the anger scenario are also studied and contrasted. The findings indicate similarities and differences in the use of anger metaphors in the two languages. The three most frequently used metaphors in American English involve the container, possessed object and opponent source domains while the most frequently used ones in Kabyle involve the fire, container and possessed object source domains. These results confirm the near-universality of the container metaphor. However, the most frequently used metaphorical source domain concept is different in the two languages due to sociocultural influences. In addition, the findings relating to aspects of the anger scenario (intensity and control) support Lakoff and Kövecses’ (1987) prototype model of anger, although it is found to be influenced by sociocultural specificities in American English and Kabyle.

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