scholarly journals L2 processing as noisy channel language comprehension

2016 ◽  
Vol 20 (4) ◽  
pp. 683-684 ◽  
Author(s):  
RICHARD FUTRELL ◽  
EDWARD GIBSON
Keyword(s):  
Language Processing ◽  
Channel Model ◽  
Memory Storage ◽  
Reasonable Assumption ◽  
Noisy Channel ◽  
World Knowledge ◽  
Probabilistic Representation ◽  
Storage And Retrieval ◽  
L2 Processing ◽  
Computational Level

The thesis in this paper is that L2 speakers differ from L1 speakers in their ability to do memory storage and retrieval about linguistic structure. We would like to suggest it is possible to go farther than this thesis and develop a computational-level theory which explains why this mechanistic difference between L2 and L1 speakers exists. For this purpose, we believe a noisy channel model (Shannon, 1948; Levy, 2008; Levy, Bicknell, Slattery & Rayner, 2009; Gibson, Bergen & Piantadosi, 2013) could be a good start. Under the reasonable assumption that L2 speakers have a less precise probabilistic representation of the syntax of their L2 language than L1 speakers do, the noisy channel model straightforwardly predicts that L2 comprehenders will depend more on world knowledge and discourse factors when interpreting and recalling utterances (cf. Gibson, Sandberg, Fedorenko, Bergen & Kiran, 2015, for this assumption applied to language processing for persons with aphasia). Also, under the assumption that L2 speakers assume a higher error rate than L1 speakers do, the noisy channel model predicts that they will be more affected by alternative parses which are not directly compatible with the form of an utterance.

scholarly journals Do we rely on good-enough processing in reading under auditory and visual noise?

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nina Zdorova ◽  
Svetlana Malyutina ◽  
Anna Laurinavichyute ◽  
Anastasiia Kaprielova ◽  
Kromina Anastasia ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Language Processing ◽  
Sentence Processing ◽  
Sentence Comprehension ◽  
Channel Model ◽  
Reading Speed ◽  
Real Life ◽  
Target Sentence ◽  
Visual Noise ◽  
Noisy Channel ◽  
Qualitative Effect

Noise, as part of real-life communication flow, degrades the quality of linguistic input and affects language processing. According to predictions of the noisy-channel model, noisemakes comprehenders rely more on word-level semantics and good-enough processing instead of actual syntactic relations. However, empirical evidence of such qualitative effect of noise on sentence processing is still lacking. For the first time, we investigated the qualitative effect of both auditory (three-talker babble) and visual (short idioms appearing next to target sentence on the screen) noise on sentence reading within one study in two eye-trackingexperiments. In both of them, we used the same stimuli — unambiguous grammatical Russian sentences — and manipulated their semantic plausibility. Our findings suggest that although readers relied on good-enough processing in Russian, neither auditory nor visualnoise qualitatively increased reliance on semantics in sentence comprehension. The only effect of noise was found in reading speed: only without noise, semantically implausible sentences were read slower than semantically plausible ones, as measured by both early and late eye-movement measures. These results do not support the predictions of the noisy-channel model. With regard to quantitative effects, we found a detrimental effect ofauditory noise on overall comprehension accuracy, and an accelerating effect of visual noise on sentence processing without accuracy decrease.

Statistical Models for Natural Language Processing

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kenneth W. Church
Keyword(s):  
Natural Language Processing ◽  
Natural Language ◽  
Language Processing ◽  
Optical Character Recognition ◽  
Channel Model ◽  
Word Sense ◽  
Noisy Channel ◽  
Spelling Correction ◽  
Pos Tagging ◽  
Author Identification

There is a considerable literature on applications of statistical methods in natural-language processing. This chapter focuses on two types of applications: (1) recognition/transduction applications based on Shannon’s Noisy Channel such as speech recognition, optical character recognition (OCR), spelling correction, part-of-speech (POS) tagging, and machine translation (MT); and (2) discrimination/ranking applications such as sentiment analysis, information retrieval, spam email filtering, author identification, and word sense disambiguation (WSD). Shannon’s Noisy-Channel model is often used for the first type, and linear separators such as Naive Bayes and logistic regression are often used for the second type. These techniques have produced successful products that are being used by large numbers of people every day: web search, spelling correction, translation, etc. Despite successes such as these, it should be mentioned that all approximations have their limitations. At some point, perhaps in the not-too-distant future, the next generation may discover that the low-hanging fruit has been pretty well picked over, and it may be necessary to revisit some of these classic limitations.

A WORD-BASED CHINESE LANGUAGE UNDERSTANDING SYSTEM

1988 ◽  
Vol 02 (01) ◽  
pp. 25-35
Author(s):  
TIAN-SHUN YAO
Keyword(s):  
Natural Language Processing ◽  
Natural Language ◽  
Language Processing ◽  
Chinese Language ◽  
Computer Programs ◽  
World Knowledge ◽  
Knowledge Source ◽  
Language Understanding ◽  
Language Analysis ◽  
The World

With the word-based theory of natural language processing, a word-based Chinese language understanding system has been developed. In the light of psychological language analysis and the features of the Chinese language, this theory of natural language processing is presented with the description of the computer programs based on it. The heart of the system is to define a Total Information Dictionary and the World Knowledge Source used in the system. The purpose of this research is to develop a system which can understand not only Chinese sentences but also the whole text.

scholarly journals Anaphora resolution without world knowledge

2003 ◽  
Vol 19 (1) ◽  
pp. 181-200 ◽  
Author(s):  
Vilson J. Leffa
Keyword(s):  
Language Processing ◽  
Expository Text ◽  
Internal Representation ◽  
Schema Theory ◽  
Anaphora Resolution ◽  
Semantic Features ◽  
World Knowledge ◽  
Semantic Constraints ◽  
Pronominal Anaphora ◽  
Sentence Subject

A typical problem in the resolution of pronominal anaphora is the presence of more than one candidate for the antecedent of the pronoun. Considering two English sentences like (1) "People buy expensive cars because they offer more status" and (2) "People buy expensive cars because they want more status" we can see that the two NPs "people" and "expensive cars", from a purely syntactic perspective, are both legitimate candidates as antecedents for the pronoun "they". This problem has been traditionally solved by using world knowledge (e.g. schema theory), where, through an internal representation of the world, we "know" that cars "offer" status and people "want" status. The assumption in this paper is that the use of world knowledge does not explain how the disambiguation process works and alternative explanations should be explored. Using a knowledge poor approach (explicit information from the text rather than implicit world knowledge) the study investigates to what extent syntactic and semantic constraints can be used to resolve anaphora. For this purpose, 1,400 examples of the word "they" were randomly selected from a corpus of 10,000,000 words of expository text in English. Antecedent candidates for each case were then analyzed and classified in terms of their syntactic functions in the sentence (subject, object, etc.) and semantic features (+ human, + animate, etc.). It was found that syntactic constraints resolved 85% of the cases. When combined with semantic constraints the resolution rate rose to 98%. The implications of the findings for Natural Language Processing are discussed.

scholarly journals Similarity-based interference and relative clauses in second language processing

2021 ◽  
pp. 026765832110635
Author(s):  
Ian Cunnings ◽  
Hiroki Fujita
Keyword(s):  
Language Processing ◽  
Relative Clause ◽  
Relative Clauses ◽  
Large Body ◽  
Interference Effects ◽  
Second Language Processing ◽  
L2 Processing ◽  
Relative Disadvantage ◽  
L1 And L2 ◽  
Object Relative

Relative clauses have long been examined in research on first (L1) and second (L2) language acquisition and processing, and a large body of research has shown that object relative clauses (e.g. ‘The boy that the girl saw’) are more difficult to process than subject relative clauses (e.g. ‘The boy that saw the girl’). Although there are different accounts of this finding, memory-based factors have been argued to play a role in explaining the object relative disadvantage. Evidence of memory-based factors in relative clause processing comes from studies indicating that representational similarity influences the difficulty associated with object relatives as a result of a phenomenon known as similarity-based interference. Although similarity-based interference has been well studied in L1 processing, less is known about how it influences L2 processing. We report two studies – an eye-tracking experiment and a comprehension task – investigating interference in the comprehension of relative clauses in L1 and L2 readers. Our results indicated similarity-based interference in the processing of object relative clauses in both L1 and L2 readers, with no significant differences in the size of interference effects between the two groups. These results highlight the importance of considering memory-based factors when examining L2 processing.

scholarly journals Divergence point analyses of visual world data: applications to bilingual research

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-9
Author(s):  
Kate Stone ◽  
Sol Lago ◽  
Daniel J. Schad
Keyword(s):  
Confidence Interval ◽  
Eye Tracking ◽  
Language Processing ◽  
Multiple Comparisons ◽  
Individual Factors ◽  
Visual World ◽  
World Data ◽  
Divergence Point ◽  
L2 Processing ◽  
Divergence Points

Abstract Much work has shown that differences in the timecourse of language processing are central to comparing native (L1) and non-native (L2) speakers. However, estimating the onset of experimental effects in timecourse data presents several statistical problems including multiple comparisons and autocorrelation. We compare several approaches to tackling these problems and illustrate them using an L1-L2 visual world eye-tracking dataset. We then present a bootstrapping procedure that allows not only estimation of an effect onset, but also of a temporal confidence interval around this divergence point. We describe how divergence points can be used to demonstrate timecourse differences between speaker groups or between experimental manipulations, two important issues in evaluating L2 processing accounts. We discuss possible extensions of the bootstrapping procedure, including determining divergence points for individual speakers and correlating them with individual factors like L2 exposure and proficiency. Data and an analysis tutorial are available at https://osf.io/exbmk/.

De Organisatie Van Het Lexicon Bij Bilingualen

1981 ◽  
Vol 11 ◽  
pp. 190-196
Author(s):  
H. Kerkman
Keyword(s):  
Language Processing ◽  
Experimental Techniques ◽  
Semantic System ◽  
Staff Members ◽  
Storage And Retrieval ◽  
Word Repetition ◽  
Retrieval Systems ◽  
Common Memory ◽  
English Students ◽  
Selection Of

In the literature on the organisation of the bilingual lexicon, two closely related issues have played a major role. In the so-called independence-interdependence issue, the central question is: Do bilinguals have two separate storage and retrieval systems, one for each language, or is there just one common memory store? A second group of studies centers around the 'compound-coordinate' distinction: 'compound' bilinguals are supposed to have only one semantic system that serves for both languages, whereas on the other hand 'coordinate' bilinguals have a separate semantic system for each language. In order to resolve the above controversies researchers have employed different experimental techniques. Many of these studies have resulted in distinct and apparently contradictory conclusions. The main reason for these unclear results seems to be the defining of the level of language processing involved in these studies: the variety of experimental techniques used has caused an obvious incompatibility of the various results obtained. One other complication that has repeatedly been neglected within the exper-iments reported in the literature concerns the existence of individual differences in bilingual subjects. By studying the distinction between 'compound' and 'coordinate' bilingualism many investigators have demonstra-ted the relevence of its consequences for the selection of bilingual subjects to be used. Two experiments in which an attempt has been made to minimise the effect of some of the fundamental problems mentioned above, are globally discussed in the context of two models for the organisation of the monolingual lexicon (Forster, 1976; Morton, 1979). Within these experiments we investigated the effects of word-frequency and word-repetition within and between languages in respectively Dutch-English staff-members of the English-American Institute at the KUN and Dutch-English students, in order to explore the sharedness of lexical 'access-files' and for 'input-logogens'. In these experiments, that support an input-mechanism common to both English and Dutch, we have used cognates, words similar in form in both languages and differing in meaning (boot) or similar in meaning (hand).

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