scholarly journals Biased statistical learning of closed-class items

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Heidi Getz ◽  
Elissa Newport
Keyword(s):  
Statistical Learning ◽  
Linear Order ◽  
The Other ◽  
Mathematical Relationship ◽  
Natural Languages ◽  
Closed Class ◽  
Asymmetrical Structure ◽  
Linguistic Representations ◽  
The One ◽  
Open Class

In natural languages, closed-class items predict open-class items but not the other way around. For example, in English, if there is a determiner there will be a noun, but nouns can occur with or without determiners. Here we asked whether statistical learning of closed-class items is also asymmetrical. In three experiments we exposed adults to a miniature language with the one-way dependency “if X then Y”: if X was present, Y was also present, but Y could occur without X. We created different versions of the language in order to ask whether learning depended on which category (X or Y) was an open or closed class. In one condition, X had the main properties of a closed class and Y had the main properties of an open class; in a contrasting condition, X had properties of an open class and Y had properties of a closed class. Learners’ exposure in these two conditions was otherwise identical. Learning was significantly better with closed-class X. Additional experiments demonstrated that it is the perceptual distinctiveness of closed-class items that drives learners to analyze them differently, and that the mathematical relationship between closed- and open-class items influences learning more strongly than their linear order. These results suggest that statistical learning is biased: learners privilege computations in which closed-class items are predictive of, rather than predicted by, open-class items. We suggest that the distributional asymmetries of closed-class items in natural languages—and perhaps the asymmetrical structure of linguistic representations—may arise in part from this learning bias.

scholarly journals Sentence first, arguments after: Mechanisms of morphosyntax acquisition

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Heidi Getz
Keyword(s):  
Distributional Analysis ◽  
Grammatical Structure ◽  
Natural Languages ◽  
Syntactic Theory ◽  
Closed Class ◽  
Linguistic Representations ◽  
Small Set ◽  
Adults And Children ◽  
The One ◽  
Open Class

Natural languages contain complex grammatical patterns. For example, in German, finite verbs occur second in main clauses while non-finite verbs occur last, as in 'dein Bruder möchte in den Zoo gehen' (“Your brother wants to go to the zoo”). Children easily acquire this type of morphosyntactic contingency (Poeppel & Wexler, 1993; Deprez & Pierce, 1994). There is extensive debate in the literature over the nature of children’s linguistic representations, but there are considerably fewer mechanistic ideas about how knowledge is actually acquired. Regarding German, one approach might be to learn the position of prosodically prominent open-class words (“verbs go 2nd or last”) and then fill in the morphological details. Alternatively, one could work in the opposite direction, learning the position of closed-class morphemes (“-te goes 2nd and -en goes last”) and fitting open-class items into the resulting structure. This second approach is counter-intuitive, but I will argue that it is the one learners take.Previous research suggests that learners focus distributional analysis on closed-class items because of their distinctive perceptual properties (Braine, 1963; Morgan, Meier, & Newport, 1987; Shi, Werker & Morgan, 1999; Valian & Coulson, 1988). The Anchoring Hypothesis (Valian & Coulson, 1988) posits that, because these items tend to occur at grammatically important points in the sentence (e.g., phrase edges), focusing on them helps learners acquire grammatical structure. Here I ask how learners use closed-class items to acquire complex morphosyntactic patterns such as the verb form/position contingency in German. Experiments 1-4 refute concerns that morphosyntactic contingencies like those in German are too complex to learn distributionally. Experiments 5-8 explore the mechanisms underlying learning, showing that adults and children analyze closed-class items as predictive of the presence and position of open-class items, but not the reverse. In these experiments, subtle mathematical distinctions in learners’ input had significant effects on learning, illuminating the biased computations underlying anchored distributional analysis. Taken together, results suggest that learners organize knowledge of language patterns relative to a small set of closed-class items—just as patterns are represented in modern syntactic theory (Rizzi & Cinque, 2016).

Open class and closed class: Sentence-imitation experiments on intrasentential code-switching

1997 ◽  
Vol 18 (3) ◽  
pp. 257-276 ◽  
Author(s):  
Shoji Azuma ◽  
Richard P. Meier
Keyword(s):  
Response Times ◽  
Code Switching ◽  
The Other ◽  
Speech Errors ◽  
Sentence Repetition ◽  
Closed Class ◽  
Sentence Imitation ◽  
Open Class ◽  
Japanese English

ABSTRACTOne of the most striking facts about exchange errors in speech is that open class items are exchanged, but closed class items are not. This article argues that a pattern analogous to that in speech errors also appears in intrasentential code-switching. Intrasentential code-switching is the alternating use of two languages in a sentence by bilinguals. Studies of the spontaneous conversation of bilinguals have supported the claim that open class items may be codeswitched, but closed class items may not. This claim was tested by two sentence repetition experiments, one with Japanese/English bilinguals and the other with Spanish/English bilinguals. The results show that the switching of closed class items caused significantly longer response times and more errors than the switching of open class items.

Function words and polarity

2021 ◽  
pp. 66-85
Author(s):  
Matteo Greco
Keyword(s):  
Experimental Approach ◽  
The Other ◽  
Function Words ◽  
Closed Class ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
Truth Value ◽  
The One ◽  
Syntactic Derivation

Function words are commonly considered to be a small and closed class of words in which each element is associated with a specific and fixed logical meaning. Unfortunately, this is not always true as witnessed by negation: on the one hand, negation does reverse the truth-value conditions of a proposition, and the other hand, it does not, realizing what is called Expletive Negation. This chapter aims to investigate whether a word that is established on the basis of its function can be ambiguous by discussing the role of the syntactic derivation in some instances of so-called Expletive Negation clauses, a case in which negation seems to lose its capacity to deny the proposition associated with its sentence. Both a theoretical and an experimental approach has been adopted.

Relational problems are not fully solved by a temporal sequence of statistical learning episodes

1997 ◽  
Vol 20 (1) ◽  
pp. 82-82 ◽  
Author(s):  
A. Vinter ◽  
P. Perruchet
Keyword(s):  
Implicit Learning ◽  
Statistical Learning ◽  
Temporal Sequence ◽  
The Other ◽  
Learning Mechanisms ◽  
Learning Research ◽  
The One

Clark & Thornton's conception finds an echo in implicit learning research, which shows that subjects may perform adaptively in complex structured situations through the use of simple statistical learning mechanisms. However, the authors fail to draw a distinction between, on the one hand, subjects' representations which emerge from type-1 learning mechanisms, and, on the other, their knowledge of the genuine abstract “recoding function” which defines a type-2 problem.

Ineffable narratives in Spanish: Another case of overgeneration by e-GIVENness

Probus ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 28 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrés Saab
Keyword(s):  
The Other ◽  
Past Tense ◽  
Semantic View ◽  
Semantic Approach ◽  
Natural Languages ◽  
Mutual Entailment ◽  
Present Tense ◽  
The One ◽  
Proper Representation

AbstractIn this paper, I present a new case of overgeneration for the semantic view on identity in ellipsis. Concretely, I show that a radical version of the semantic approach to the identity condition on ellipsis, in particular, one with the notion of mutual entailment at its heart, wrongly predicts as grammatical cases of TP-ellipsis in Spanish where a (formal) present tense feature on T in the antecedent entails a (formal) past tense feature in the elliptical constituent and vice versa. However, this is not attested: present tense cannot serve as a suitable antecedent for formal past tense in TP-ellipsis contexts, regardless of pragmatic entailment. On the basis of this and other new observations in the realm of tense and ellipsis, several consequences for the theory of identity in ellipsis, on the one hand, and the proper representation of tense in natural languages, on the other, are also discussed.

scholarly journals Ambiguities in sign languages

2015 ◽  
Vol 32 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Josep Quer ◽  
Markus Steinbach
Keyword(s):  
The Other ◽  
Auditory Modality ◽  
Great Length ◽  
Natural Languages ◽  
Sign Languages ◽  
Different Types ◽  
The One ◽  
The Impact

AbstractNatural languages come in two different modalities – the aural-auditory modality of spoken languages and the visual-gestural modality of sign languages. The impact of modality on the grammatical system has been discussed at great length in the last 20 years. By contrast, the impact of modality on semantics in general and on ambiguities in particular has not yet been addressed in detail. In this paper, we deal with different types of ambiguities in sign languages. We discuss typical lexical and structural ambiguities as well as modality-specific aspects such as ambiguities in the use of the signing space and non-manual markers. In addition, we address the questions how sign languages avoid ambiguities and to what extent certain kinds of ambiguities and non-ambiguities depend on the visual-manual modality of sign languages. Since gestures use the same articulatory channel that is also active in the production of signs, we also discuss ambiguities between gestures on the one hand and grammaticalized gestures and signs on the other.

scholarly journals Debunking the I above YOU illusion

2011 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 35
Author(s):  
Marie-Odile Junker
Keyword(s):  
Speech Acts ◽  
Inverse System ◽  
The Other ◽  
Natural Languages ◽  
World Languages ◽  
Inverse Systems ◽  
Split Ergativity ◽  
Person Hierarchy ◽  
The One ◽  
Universal Scale

There is a long tradition in placing I above YOU in linguistics and grammar. In our Western grammatical terminology, I is the “first person”. In the universal scale of agentivity, or “universal person hierarchy”, I is placed before YOU. The goal of this paper is to examine the proof for ordering I and YOU in such a fashion. The universal character of local person marking in human languages, and existing proposals concerning the person hierarchy are reviewed. The kind of grammatical phenomena governed by the so-called “universal hierarchy”: split ergativity, inverse systems, and pronominal marking, are discussed. First, we show that there are languages whose grammatical phenomena are governed by the other order, with YOU above I. Looking for the possibility that two person hierarchies share room within world languages, we then turn to the facts that support placing I above YOU, and demonstrate that this proof is non-existent. The egocentric perspective belongs to linguistics, and to certain habits of a Western school of thought, not to natural languages. The data examined here also shows that there are no languages where split ergativity or the inverse system would operate from a hierarchy placing 3rd persons above 2nd or 1st , thus confirming a 2, 1>3 hierarchy. As far as a hierarchy between singular persons or Speech Acts participants is concerned, the one for which there is clear evidence is the one where YOU outranks I: 2>I.

A Distinção Gráfico-Linguístico e a Notação Musical

2018 ◽  
Vol 74 (4) ◽  
pp. 1465-1492
Author(s):  
Fabrício Pires Fortes
Keyword(s):  
General Problem ◽  
Graphical Representation ◽  
Visual Representations ◽  
The Other ◽  
Linguistic Representation ◽  
Musical Notation ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
Linguistic Representations ◽  
The One ◽  
Pictorial Representations

This paper examines the traditional musical notation from the viewpoint of the general problem concerning the types of visual representations. More specifically, we analyze this system in relation to the distinction between graphical and linguistic representations. We start by comparing this notation with the representational systems which are most commonly associated with such categories: on the one hand, pictorial representations as an example of a graphical representation; on the other hand, verbal writing usually associated with a linguistic representation. Then, we examine the traditional musical notation in relation to different ways of drawing the distinction graphic–linguistic, and we evaluate the applicability of such criteria to the former system. Finally, we present some general remarks about the legitimacy of this distinction both with respect to representational systems in general and to the specific case of the traditional musical notation.

Gender and Noun Classification

2018 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
The Other ◽  
Functional Elements ◽  
Natural Languages ◽  
Morphological Form ◽  
Syntactic Theory ◽  
Lexical Categories ◽  
Nominal Structure ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
The Many ◽  
The One

This volume explores the many ways in which natural languages categorize nouns into genders or classes. A noun may belong to a given class because of its logical or symbolic similarity with other nouns, because it shares a similar morphological form with other nouns, or simply through an arbitrary convention. The aim of this book is to establish which functional or lexical categories are responsible for this type of classification, especially along the nominal syntactic spine. The book’s contributors draw on data from a wide range of languages, including Amharic, French, Gitksan, Haro, Lithuanian, Japanese, Mi’kmaw, Persian, and Shona. Chapters examine where in the nominal structure gender is able to function as a classifying device, and how in the absence of gender, other functional elements in the nominal spine come to fill that gap. Other chapters focus on how gender participates in grammatical concord and agreement phenomena. The volume also discusses semantic agreement: hybrid agreement sometimes arises due to a distinction that grammars encode between natural gender on the one hand and grammatical gender on the other. The findings in the volume have significant implications for syntactic theory and theories of interpretation, and contribute to a greater understanding of the interplay between inflection and derivation.

Natural Morphology

2018 ◽  
pp. 243-264
Author(s):  
Livio Gaeta
Keyword(s):  
Language Acquisition ◽  
Language Impairment ◽  
Two Dimensions ◽  
The Other ◽  
Comprehensive Understanding ◽  
Natural Languages ◽  
Linguistic Sign ◽  
Specific Factors ◽  
The One ◽  
Complex Words

Natural Morphology offers a fairly elaborated model for analyzing and interpreting morphological facts, which heavily relies on the one hand on a semiotic foundation of the linguistic sign and on the other on a comprehensive understanding of the cognitive, typological, and system-specific aspects of natural languages. In this regard, it crucially distinguishes a system-independent dimension in which a number of universal preferences are at play for producing and understanding morphologically complex words from a system-dependent dimension in which language-specific factors play a major role. The morphological systems of natural languages result from the dialectic relation between these two dimensions which are concretely investigated in any conceivable empirical domain offered by languages as they are used especially in natural(istic) speech contexts, from language acquisition and change to language impairment and death.

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