scholarly journals Toddlers can use semantic cues to learn difficult nonadjacent dependencies

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jon Willits ◽  
Jenny Saffran ◽  
Jill Lany
Keyword(s):  
Natural Languages ◽  
Semantic Cues ◽  
Semantic Categories ◽  
Nonadjacent Dependencies ◽  
Linguistic Structures

languages. The fact that infants and adults have difficulty learning nonadjacent structure in laboratory settings has led to theories suggesting that there are strict constraints on the units over which humans track nonadjacent structure. In four experiments, we tested the hypothesis that correlated semantic cues enhance toddlers’ ability to learn nonadjacent linguistic structures. Toddlers successfully transferred these patterns to new strings spanning novel intervening items, and to novel nonadjacent pairs drawn from the same semantic categories. The results provide evidence that toddlers can use rich, redundant input that includes meaning to learn nonadjacent structures akin to those present in natural languages.

Strategies of Source Attribution: Semantic Features and Trace Strength as Cues to the Origin of Memories

2004 ◽  
Vol 63 (2) ◽  
pp. 93-106 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gerald Echterhoff ◽  
Walter Hussy
Keyword(s):  
Source Monitoring ◽  
Semantic Features ◽  
Identification Performance ◽  
Source Attribution ◽  
Test Interval ◽  
Semantic Cues ◽  
Test Items ◽  
Semantic Categories ◽  
Trace Strength ◽  
Study Test

Research has suggested that people may use different qualitative cues or one quantitative cue (trace strength, activation) to attribute memories to their source. In an experiment, the diagnosticity of a qualitative cue (semantic features) was manipulated between participants: Distinctness was high when items from source 1 and items from source 2 belonged to different semantic categories, while it was low when both sources contained items from both categories. Depending on the study-test interval (48 hr or 10 min), trace strength of test items was either low or high for all participants. Thus, the quantitative cue was always diagnostic. Participants primarily used semantic cues in source attributions of new items. Also, source identification performance profited from semantic dissimilarity, not from high trace strength. The findings indicate that qualitative cues may play a more prominent role than quantitative cues in source monitoring.

What is learnable in manually coded English sign systems?

1992 ◽  
Vol 13 (3) ◽  
pp. 313-340 ◽  
Author(s):  
Brenda Schick ◽  
Mary Pat Moeller
Keyword(s):  
Reading Achievement ◽  
American Sign Language ◽  
Sign Language ◽  
Control Group ◽  
American Sign ◽  
Deaf Students ◽  
Natural Languages ◽  
Sign Systems ◽  
Sign System ◽  
Linguistic Structures

AbstractIt has been suggested that manual sign systems designed to represent English are unlearnable because they are not natural languages. In order to examine this premise, the present study examines reading achievement and expressive English skills of 13 profoundly deaf students, aged 7;1 to 14;8, who were educated using only a manually coded English (MCE) sign system. Linguistic structures selected for analysis were designed to reflect unique characteristics of English, as well as those common to English and American Sign Language, and to obtain a broad picture of English skills. Results showed that the deaf students had expressive English skills comparable to a hearing control group for some features of English that reflected syntactic and lexical skills. They showed substantial deficits in inflectional morphological skills that were not predictive of the complexity of their language. The results reveal which aspects of MCE appear to be learnable and which appear problematic for deaf students.

scholarly journals Formal Features of the Structural-Semantic Categories of One-Part Sentences in the Rutul Language

2020 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 91-101
Author(s):  
S.M. Makhmudova
Keyword(s):  
Natural Languages ◽  
Semantic Categories ◽  
The World ◽  
Syntactic Theories ◽  
Single Part ◽  
Linguistic Material ◽  
Formal Features

While syntax attracts the attention of an increasing number of linguists in the world, syntactic theories are created based on the linguistic material of most natural languages, the syntax of Dagestani languages remains a kind of lacuna, not known even in a simple descriptive plan. One of the most poorly studied Islands in the Dagestani syntax is single - part sentences that have not been analyzed either in terms of composition or in terms of forms of expression. In the existing research on the syntax of Dagestani languages, single-part sentences are either not considered at all, or are considered very superficially. Meanwhile, single-part sentences are a fairly developed constructive class in Dagestani languages. This work contains an attempt to analyze single-part sentences in the Rutulian language, the syntax of which has not been subjected to special research until now.

scholarly journals What Is the Sense in Logic and Philosophy of Language

2020 ◽  
Vol 49 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Urszula Wybraniec-Skardowska
Keyword(s):  
Philosophy Of Language ◽  
Partial Algebra ◽  
Algebraic Models ◽  
Natural Languages ◽  
Semantic Categories ◽  
Language L ◽  
Semantic Correspondence

In the paper, various notions of the logical semiotic sense of linguistic expressions – namely, syntactic and semantic, intensional and extensional – are considered and formalised on the basis of a formal-logical conception of any language L characterised categorially in the spirit of certain Husserl's ideas of pure grammar, Leśniewski-Ajdukiewicz's theory of syntactic/semantic categories and, in accordance with Frege's ontological canons, Bocheński's and some of Suszko's ideas of language adequacy of expressions of L. The adequacy ensures their unambiguous syntactic and semantic senses and mutual, syntactic and semantic correspondence guaranteed by the acceptance of a postulate of categorial compatibility of syntactic and semantic (extensional and intensional) categories of expressions of L. This postulate defines the unification of these three logical senses. There are three principles of compositionality which follow from this postulate: one syntactic and two semantic ones already known to Frege. They are treated as conditions of homomorphism of partial algebra of L into algebraic models of L: syntactic, intensional and extensional. In the paper, they are applied to some expressions with quantifiers. Language adequacy connected with the logical senses described in the logical conception of language L is, obviously, an idealisation. The syntactic and semantic unambiguity of its expressions is not, of course, a feature of natural languages, but every syntactically and semantically ambiguous expression of such languages may be treated as a schema representing all of its interpretations that are unambiguous expressions.

scholarly journals Graph-Based Representation Of Syntactic Structures Of Natural Languages Based On Dependency Relations

2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (5) ◽  
pp. 293-301
Author(s):  
Chang-ho An, Zhanfang Zhao, Hee-kyung Moon
Keyword(s):  
Language Processing ◽  
Knowledge Graph ◽  
Learning Approach ◽  
Natural Languages ◽  
Syntactic Structures ◽  
Syntactic Knowledge ◽  
Probabilistic Distribution ◽  
Knowledge Graphs ◽  
Dependency Relations ◽  
Linguistic Structures

Deep Learning approach using probability distribution to natural language processing achieves significant accomplishment. However, natural languages have inherent linguistic structures rather than probabilistic distribution. This paper presents a new graph-based representation of syntactic structures called syntactic knowledge graph based on dependency relations. This paper investigates the valency theory and the markedness principle of natural languages to derive an appropriate set of dependency relations for the syntactic knowledge graph. A new set of dependency relations derived from the markers is proposed. This paper also demonstrates the representation of various linguistic structures to validate the feasibility of syntactic knowledge graphs.

Bedeutung und Gebrauch in der Konstruktionsgrammatik. Wie kompositionell sind modale Infinitive im Deutschen?

2009 ◽  
Vol 37 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Anatol Stefanowitsch
Keyword(s):  
Construction Grammar ◽  
Natural Languages ◽  
Idiomatic Expressions ◽  
General Abstract ◽  
Linguistic Structures ◽  
Semantic Properties

AbstractTheories of grammar typically have some way of accommodating fixed or semi-fixed idiomatic expressions in addition to expressions derived compositionally by general abstract rules. Construction Grammar differs from most other theories in that it takes such idiomatic expressions as a model for the grammar of natural languages as a whole. Linguistic structures at all levels of complexity and schematicity are uniformly modeled as “constructions”, i.e. form-meaning pairs with unpredictable formal or semantic properties. This view of grammar is plausible only to the extent that abstract and complex linguistic structures can be shown to constitute such form-meaning pairs. In this paper, I present an analysis of the so-called “modal infinitives” in German (structures consisting of

Affective ratings for spanish words belonging to three semantic categories

2011 ◽  
Author(s):  
C. Moldovan ◽  
P. Ferre ◽  
M. Guasch ◽  
R. Sanchez-Casas
Keyword(s):  
Affective Ratings ◽  
Semantic Categories

Aphasia for specific semantic categories

1965 ◽  
Author(s):  
H. Goodglass ◽  
B. Klein ◽  
P. Carey
Keyword(s):  
Semantic Categories

Linguistic Data Model for Natural Languages and Artificial Intelligence. Part 5. Introduction to Logic

Discourse ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 6 (3) ◽  
pp. 109-117
Author(s):  
O. M. Polyakov
Keyword(s):  
Artificial Intelligence ◽  
Mathematical Logic ◽  
Natural Language ◽  
Semantic Interpretation ◽  
General View ◽  
World Model ◽  
Semantic Approach ◽  
Natural Languages ◽  
The World ◽  
Linguistic Aspect

Introduction. The article continues the series of publications on the linguistics of relations (hereinafter R–linguistics) and is devoted to an introduction to the logic of natural language in relation to the approach considered in the series. The problem of natural language logic still remains relevant, since this logic differs significantly from traditional mathematical logic. Moreover, with the appearance of artificial intelligence systems, the importance of this problem only increases. The article analyzes logical problems that prevent the application of classical logic methods to natural languages. This is possible because R-linguistics forms the semantics of a language in the form of world model structures in which language sentences are interpreted.Methodology and sources. The results obtained in the previous parts of the series are used as research tools. To develop the necessary mathematical representations in the field of logic and semantics, the formulated concept of the interpretation operator is used.Results and discussion. The problems that arise when studying the logic of natural language in the framework of R–linguistics are analyzed. These issues are discussed in three aspects: the logical aspect itself; the linguistic aspect; the aspect of correlation with reality. A very General approach to language semantics is considered and semantic axioms of the language are formulated. The problems of the language and its logic related to the most General view of semantics are shown.Conclusion. It is shown that the application of mathematical logic, regardless of its type, to the study of natural language logic faces significant problems. This is a consequence of the inconsistency of existing approaches with the world model. But it is the coherence with the world model that allows us to build a new logical approach. Matching with the model means a semantic approach to logic. Even the most General view of semantics allows to formulate important results about the properties of languages that lack meaning. The simplest examples of semantic interpretation of traditional logic demonstrate its semantic problems (primarily related to negation).

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